human
Oh, Aunty, said Grace, by way of coaxing, having found this of good service ere now;
gpt
Aunty, don't you wish it was tea-time now?
human
All meals come in their proper season. We should be grateful for them; but not greedy.
gpt
Oh, but, Aunty, you would not call it greedy to be hungry, I should hope. And you would be so hungry, if you only knew. Ah, but you won't get me to tell you though. I have always been celebrated for making them. And this time I have quite surpassed myself. Now, how much will you offer me to tell you what it is?
human
Grace, you are frivolous! Miss Patch answered, yet with a slight inclination of her nose towards the brown kitchen where the wood-fire burned.
gpt
If our food is wholesome, and vouchsafed in proportion to our daily wants, we should lift up our hearts and be thankful. To let our minds dwell upon that which is a bodily question only, tends to degrade them, and leads us to confound the true end--the glory of our Maker--with the means to that end, which are vulgarly called victuals.
human
Very well, Aunty, we will do with bread and butter. I only made my Sally Lunns for you; and if they degrade your mind, I will give them to Margery Daw, or the cottage with ten children, down at the bottom of the wood. What a treat they will have, to be sure, with them!
gpt
Not so, my dear! If you made them for me, I should fail in my duty if I refused them. We are ordered to be kind and courteous and long-suffering towards one another. And I know that you make them particularly well. They are quite unfit for people in that lower sphere of life. It would be quite sinful to tempt them so! They would puff them up with vanity, and worldliness, and pride. But if you insist upon my tasting them, my dear, in justice to your work I think that you should see to the toasting. Poor Mrs. Daw smokes everything.
human
Of course she does. But I never meant to let her do them, Aunty. Only I wanted to be quite sure first that you would oblige me by tasting them.
gpt
My dear, I will do so, as soon as you please.