Old Peter's ear-rings were
indirectly connected with his house. He had not always lived among those
mountains. He had been on the sea, where his ears were decorated, and he
had travelled a good deal on land, where he had ornamented his mind with
many ideas which were not in general use in the part of his State in
which he was born. His house stood a little back from the high road,
and if a traveller wished to be entertained, Peter was generally willing
to take him in, provided he had left his wife and family at home. The
old man himself had no objection to wives and children, but his two
pretty daughters had.
These young women had waited on their father and myself at supper-time,
one continually bringing hot griddle cakes, and the other giving me
every opportunity to test the relative merits of the seven different
kinds of preserved fruit which, in little glass plates, covered the
otherwise unoccupied spaces on the tablecloth. The latter, when she
found that there was no further possible way of serving us, presumed to
sit down at the corner of the table and begin her supper. But in spite
of this apparent humility, which was only a custom of the country, there
was that in the general air of the pretty daughters which left no doubt
in the mind of the intelligent observer that they stood at the wheel in
that house.
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