“Some kidney soup and cold roast beef and a good pudding, or some Christ Church tartlets, the best vegetables they hev and a bottle of Bass’ best ale or porter, but thou can-hev a cup of sloppy tea if tha fancies it.”
“I think no better of sloppy things than thou does, Antony. I’ll hev a glass of good, pale sherry wine, and the same would be better for thee than anything Bass brews. Bass makes a man stout, and thou art now just the right weight; an ounce more flesh would spoil thy figure and take the spring out of thy step and put more color in thy face and take the music out of thy voice; but please thy dear self about thy eating; perhaps I am a bit selfish about thy good looks, but when a woman gets used to showing herself off with a handsome man she can’t bear to give up that bit of pride.”
“Well, then, Annie dear, whativer pleases thee, pleases me. Send for number five, and order what thou thinks best.”
“Nay, Antony, thou shalt have thy own wish. It is little enough to give thee.”
“It is full and plenty, if thou puts thy wish with it.”
Then Annie happily ordered the kidney soup and cold roast and the particular tarts he liked and the sherry instead of the beer, and the fare pleased both, and they ate it with that smiling cheerfulness which is of all thanksgiving the most acceptable to the Bountiful Giver of all good things. And as they ate they talked of Katherine’s beauty and loving heart and of Dick’s ready obedience and manly respect for his father, and food so seasoned and so cheerfully eaten is the very best banquet that mortals can ever hope to taste in this life.
In the meantime, Dick, urged both by his father’s desire and his own wistful longing to see Faith Foster, lost no time in reaching his home village. He was shocked by its loneliness and silence. He did not meet or see a single man. The women were shut up in their cottages. Their trouble had passed all desire for company and all hope of any immediate assistance. Talking only enervated them and they all had the same miserable tale to tell. It might have been a deserted village but for the musical chime of the church clock and the sight of a few little children sitting listlessly on the doorsteps of the cottages. Hunger had killed in them the instinct of play. “It hurts us to play. It makes the pain come,” said one little lad, as he looked with large suffering eyes into Dick’s face; but never asked from him either pity or help. Yet his very silence was eloquence. No words could have moved to sympathy so strongly as the voiceless appeal of his sad suffering eyes, his thin face, and the patient helplessness of his hopeless quiet. Dick could not bear it. He gave the child some money, and it began to cry softly and to whimper “Mammy! Mammy!” and Dick hurried homeward, rather ashamed of his own emotion, yet full of the tenderest pity.
He found Britton pottering about the stable and his wife Sarah trying with clumsy fingers to fashion a child’s frock. “Oh, Master Dick!” she cried. “Why did tha come back to this unhappy place? I think there is pining and famishing in ivery house and sickness hard following it.”
“I have come, Sarah, to see what can be done to help the trouble.”
“A God’s mercy, sir! We be hard set in Annis village this day.”