It was a goodly sight--that table, with Martin Poyser's round good-humoured face and large person at the head of it helping his servants to the fragrant roast beef and pleased when the empty plates came again.
As it was, Ben ate his roast beef to-night with a serene sense of having stolen nothing more than a few peas and beans as seed for his garden since the last harvest supper, and felt warranted in thinking that Alick's suspicious eye, for ever upon him, was an injury to his innocence.
Did ever any one see such a fine piece of beef so completely ruined?
Notwithstanding the ruinous state of the beef, the gentleman managed to out himself some delicate slices, part of which he ate in silence.
"Let us thank God for simple pleasures, roast beef and rice pudding, a good appetite and beer.
Roast beef and rice pudding for fifty Sundays in the year.
He didn't feel so hungry as he thought he should, and so contented himself with a bit of boiled beef, and some strawberries and cream.
Neither the beef nor the strawberries and cream seemed happy, either - seemed discontented like.
It was a substantial meal; for, over and above the ordinary tea equipage, the board creaked beneath the weight of a jolly round of beef, a ham of the first magnitude, and sundry towers of buttered Yorkshire cake, piled slice upon slice in most alluring order.
The good-natured locksmith was still patting her on the back and applying such gentle restoratives, when a message arrived from Mrs Varden, making known to all whom it might concern, that she felt too much indisposed to rise after her great agitation and anxiety of the previous night; and therefore desired to be immediately accommodated with the little black teapot of strong mixed tea, a couple of rounds of buttered toast, a middling-sized dish of beef and ham cut thin, and the Protestant Manual in two volumes post octavo.
- Bighorn and Black-Tails.-
Beef and Venison.- Good Quarters and Good Cheer.- An Alarm.- An Intrusion.- Unwelcome Guests.- Desolation of the Larder.
"I wonder if there's anything to open one of these tins of corned
beef?"