noon
Will you come and eat your dinner at my little table to-night , and talk , discuss this matter of her visit to you ? '' `` I will if there is any dinner , '' Nancy said , putting out a throbbing hand to him . There was a dinner . It was Hitty 's conception of an emergency meal -- the kind of thing that her mother before her had prepared on wash-day when an unexpected relative alighted from the noon train , and surprised her into inadvertent hospitality . It began with steamed clams and melted butter sauce . Hitty knew a fish market where the clams were imported direct from Cape Cod by the nephew of a man who used to go to school with her husband 's brother , and he warranted every clam she bought of him . They were served in soup plates and the drawn butter in demi-tasses , but Hitty would have it no other way .