‘We have come along a little since then. But how these passages take you back to the homely life of those days!’
‘Do read some.’
‘Well, listen to this, “And then to bed without prayers, to-morrow being washing-day.” Fancy such a detail coming down to us through two centuries.’
‘Why no prayers?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose they had to get up early on washing-days, and so they wanted to go to sleep soon.’
‘I’m afraid, dear, you do the same without as good an excuse. Read another!’
‘He goes to dine with some one—his uncle, I think. He says, “An excellent dinner, but the venison pasty was palpable beef, which was not handsome.”’
‘How beautiful! Mrs. Hunt Mortimer’s sole last week was palpable plaice. Mr. Pepys is right. It was not handsome.’
‘Here’s another grand entry: “Talked with my wife of the poorness and meanness of all that the people about us do, compared with what we do.” I dare say he was right, for they did things very well. When he dined out, he says that his host gave him “the meanest dinner of beef, shoulder and umbles of venison, and a few pigeons, and all in the meanest manner that ever I did see, to the basest degree.”
‘What are umbles, dear?’