"Not now, thank you. It's about our tea-time."

"Glad it isn't your DINNER-time!" he said, heartily.

"Well, yes. We don't see the sense of dining late in a place like this.
The fact is, we're both village-bred, and we like the mid-day dinner.
We make rather a high tea, though."

"So do we. I always want a dish of something hot. My wife thinks cake
is light, but I think meat is."

"Well, cake is the New England superstition," I observed. "And I
suppose York State, too."

"Yes, more than pie is," he agreed. "For supper, anyway. You may have
pie at any or all of the three meals, but you have GOT to have cake at
tea, if you are anybody at all. In the place where my wife lived, a
woman's social standing was measured by the number of kinds of cake she
had."

We laughed at that, too, and then there came a little interval and I
said, "Your place is looking fine."

He turned his head and gave it a comprehensive stare. "Yes, it is," he
admitted. "They tell me it's an ugly old house, and I guess if my
girls, counting my daughter-in-law, had their way, they would have that
French roof off, and something Georgian--that's what they call it--on,
about as quick as the carpenter could do it. They want a kind of
classic front, with pillars and a pediment; or more the Mount Vernon