“I always meant, when I could have things as I chose,” said Mrs. Pearmain, as they sat and sewed, “to order my table so that not one ounce of flesh should ever sully it. I don’t proselyte my neighbors; because I believe in individual liberty; but since you inquire, I will say that I’ve tried it long enough to feel sure, and as there never has been a piece of meat cooked in my house, so there never shall be!” and she nodded her pretty head like a piece of mechanism.

“But what does Mr. Pearmain say?” asked the other.

“Oh, he agrees about it, fortunately, so there is no difficulty there. In fact, it was Mr. Pearmain’s remarks, before we married, that first led me to think seriously of the subject. He always used to call it cannibalism whenever the beef was cut and the blood followed the knife. And I thought so much of his opinion I began to turn the matter over.”

“Well, I declare! I don’t believe I shall ever think so much of any man’s opinion,” said Mrs. Morley. “And did Mr. Pearmain’s conviction really affect your appetite? What an idea! And you ceased eating meat in consequence of Mr. Pearmain’s conviction?”

“Well, in consequence of my own conviction,” said the priestess. “It grew disgusting to me. We boarded together, you know, and when my plate came, and I began to help myself to salt, Mr. Pearmain would glance at it, and say, ‘Dead flesh.’”

“I should think that would have been disgusting.”

“I did feel vexed a little at first, but presently I was saying the words to myself. And presently I couldn’t taste it at all.”

“The idea!” said Mrs. Morley, hunting for her lost needle.

“Oh, if you just run the matter over yourself, you won’t be so scornful, Teresa. If you remember every time you take a bit of mutton that you are eating death and corruption--”

“Well, I never!” said Mrs. Morley, catching her breath.

“Why, only think of it!” said Mrs. Pearmain, warming at her work. “How can you expect anybody to be good that is constantly fed and nourished and kept alive on a lower form of life?”

“But, bless my heart,” cried Mrs. Morley, struggling up from under the avalanche of words, “vegetables are a lower form of life, and one must live on something.”

“Vegetables are innocent life, at any rate, with no vile propensities or impure parts. And, moreover, we are half vegetables ourselves.”

“We? Oh, what in the world do you mean, Emily?” exclaimed Mrs. Morley, in a terrified manner, as if she had just received a revelation as to how fearfully she was made.

“Certainly. Didn’t you know that?” said Mrs. Pearmain, with a superior air. “The movements of our bodies that are voluntary are animal; those that are involuntary are vegetable, such as the circulation, and all the processes that go on while we sleep.”

“Isn’t it dreadful?” gasped Mrs. Morley.

“Dreadful? I think it’s beautiful. It’s a sort of union in ourselves of the three kingdoms--vegetable, animal, and spiritual; for when the nerves come in and control the great brute muscles--”

“But, really, Emily--”

“Now don’t be silly, Teresa. A woman of your power of mind has only to look at the thing rationally to feel just as I do. For, as I was saying, how can those people be good who receive all their increase from a lower animal form, from brutal instincts and actions--how can they help receiving those instincts and being tempted to those actions, and becoming, under the guise of men and women, a baser sort of animals themselves?”

“I don’t know--perhaps so,” said Mrs. Morley, a little moved, it may be, by the reference to her power of mind.

“There must be an inherent principle in man that will rise whether or no, or else we never should have gotten along as far as we have. But it would be so much faster, so much further, if it wasn’t for this food on which we sustain our growth. And while we eat it, I don’t see how the great perfect race can ever come at all. It never will come, Teresa,” said Mrs. Pearmain, resting on her elbow and looking through her friend as if to the far-distant future--“it never will come till people cease to eat flesh, and live on the things that nature provides without pain or slaughter. To think, every time you sit down to table, that some creature which enjoyed life has had to give it up for your appetite! That makes me sick!” said Mrs. Pearmain.

“Well, it’s very wonderful. I never thought of it before. I really will look it all over. But I don’t see what there is to live on--I should starve on bread and butter.”

“Butter! We only allow butter as a rarity.”

“Well, milk, then.”

“Milk, indeed! Do you suppose that, while cows are kept in the unnatural condition in which the milker keeps them, we should drink their milk? Oh no, indeed, seldom milk, seldom cream, do we touch.”

“My goodness! Then you’ve nothing left but eggs.”

“Well, once in a while an egg; but rarely. I never can get over feeling that to break an egg is the murder of an innocent.”

“Why, then, you can’t have cake, or--”

“What do you want that for?--unhealthy, indigestible, poisonous--no, we never have it.”

“Nor doughnuts?”

“Doughnuts!” with ineffable scorn.

“And you can’t have pies?”

“Never. But we have delicious sauces--apple, cranberry, grape, and all those.”

“But what in wonder do you do when you have company?”

“Oh, you have no idea of how many delicious ways there are in which the grains can be cooked, or of how many delicious forms of bread there are. You can get up a perfectly harmonious dinner of the various vegetables that really leaves you nothing to desire; mushrooms are as good as steaks; beans can be made to imitate roast beef; and with fruits and sauces, as I said, there is enough of everything, and those who want meat needn’t come to us.”

“I should die!”

“Not after you were used to it,” said Mrs. Pearmain, seriously. “You would learn to like the new way and detest the old.”

“It would set free a great deal of money, to be sure, to be used on other things,” mused Mrs. Morley.

“Oh, a great deal! And then you would be twice as healthy and strong, and your children would be an improvement on you. In fact, it is for the sake of Harry chiefly that we are so strenuous about following up the matter. It may not make a mighty difference with me, beginning after twenty, but I expect to see Harry--I can’t help seeing Harry--a very different person from other people’s boys. And if he could only find and marry, when he grows up, a woman who had been nourished on the same sort of food--just think, Teresa, what we might expect of their children! It would be the beginning of a race that would conquer the world, the beginning of that great perfect race which will do such wonderful things as pass our comprehension.”

“What makes you talk so ecstatically of that great perfect race, Emily? How do you know anything about it?”

“Why, don’t geology and those things show us that race after race of animals has passed away, and only left its bones behind it? And should we suppose that man would be an exception to the general fate? But as each race passes, something takes its place a little superior to it, sprung from it, perhaps; and this great perfect race is to take the place of man, sprung from man and woman, but from the first man and woman that ceased to eat death and corruption. Oh, Teresa,” said Mrs. Pearmain, her cheeks and her eyes glowing, “if it should be your child and mine!”

The last stroke did the work. Mrs. Morley, it might be said, threw up the sponge; she was a convert from that moment to Mrs. Pearmain’s theories. She went through the house that very day; she inquired into everything; she took notes of everything; she learned how to do everything; and she went home at night all prepared to convert Mr. Morley, and to give her Louise to be married to Harry--if it happened to be Louise.

Poor Mr. Morley! He loved his juicy steak; he rolled under his tongue the sweet morsel of the oyster out of a side bone; he considered pepper-pot a dish fit for the gods; he was fond of broiled liver and a rasher of bacon; a cold pickled shoulder of pork he thought good enough to invite the king to partake. In fact, he was a murderous cannibal, pure and simple, according to Mrs. Pearmain’s lights, who enjoyed his dinner without being, as he thought himself--and as we think, so we are--either exactly an epicure or a glutton.

But it was of no use. When Mrs. Morley unmasked her batteries that night, and went over Mrs. Pearmain’s plan of campaign, with a whole added troop of exclamation and emphasis and entreaty and embracing, he knew he must surrender. He made a faint resistance, but on the whole he didn’t believe it was to be a permanent affair with his little Teresa; he didn’t like to deny her anything just now either; it was probably only an incidental whim that would pass, and so he yielded handsomely, and promised that she should have her own way. And then the idea of marrying his girl to Pearmain’s boy was a pleasant one: Pearmain was rich and generous and good, the friend of years. Yes, he would promise.

“Kiss the book!” cried Mrs. Morley.

“No, I won’t do that,” said he. “I’ll promise, and my word’s as good as my bond.”