Gelstrap stood behind his master's
chair. I sat next Mrs Theobald on her left hand, and was thus just
opposite her father-in-law, whom I had every opportunity of observing.
During the first ten minutes or so, which were taken up with the soup and
the bringing in of the fish, I should probably have thought, if I had not
long since made up my mind about him, what a fine old man he was and how
proud his children should be of him; but suddenly as he was helping
himself to lobster sauce, he flushed crimson, a look of extreme vexation
suffused his face, and he darted two furtive but fiery glances to the two
ends of the table, one for Theobald and one for Christina. They, poor
simple souls, of course saw that something was exceedingly wrong, and so
did I, but I couldn't guess what it was till I heard the old man hiss in
Christina's ear: "It was not made with a hen lobster. What's the use,"
he continued, "of my calling the boy Ernest, and getting him christened
in water from the Jordan, if his own father does not know a cock from a
hen lobster?"
This cut me too, for I felt that till that moment I had not so much as
known that there were cocks and hens among lobsters, but had vaguely
thought that in the matter of matrimony they were even as the angels in
heaven, and grew up almost spontaneously from rocks and sea-weed.
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