Time has not blurred the memory of a single detail of our stay in this
welcome house of refuge, but the telling of what was moving and charming
to me would, I fear, bore others. There was a ham, two indeed, and
flitches beside, in the rack hanging from the ceiling, and there were eggs
--three, to be precise--in the larder, to which, by equal good luck
considering the time of the year, I added two more by a raid into the
hen-house. It was all natural and simple enough, but Mistress Waynflete
hailed their production almost as amazedly as if I had indeed drawn them
out of my hat. But how I fetched and carried, chopped wood and drew water,
swept the floor and laid the table, fried ham and boiled eggs, doing all
these things with music in my heart and a noisy song on my lips--is
everything to me and nothing to my tale.
Mistress Waynflete had disappeared into one of the three or four rooms of
which the house consisted, to make herself presentable, as she absurdly
put it. When the table was laid and the ham cooked, I halloed the news to
her, and rushed off to the shed to attend to my outward appearance.
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