“I fancy I’ve got it,” said he.
“Have you?” I answered delightedly. “Cry up, then!”
“Christmas pie!” he piped, in his thin, cracked voice.
Every head was turned momentarily our way. Mr. Sant left his stool and bowed.
“The artist is vindicated,” said he. “The gentleman has the right penetrative vision. A mince-pie it is.” And he made his illustration forthwith the text for a lovely disquisition on plum-porridge and frumenty and goose-pie, “on beef and plum-pudding and turkey and chine,” and, generally, the history and rationale of Christmas fare, till his audience shifted and sighed under the influence of an illusive surfeit.
A thing guessed for “one o’ them tree worms,” and turning out to be a yule log, came next, and provoked an allusion to a Norfolk custom on certain farms of dealing out the strong cider to the household at meals for so long as the block was in consuming; for which reason the servants would select for Yule the biggest and most cross-grained stump of elm they could find—a shrewd providence which tickled the simple fancy of this fishing community, where wood for burning was economized to the last spark it would yield.
A leathern jack coming third, and passing, by way of a wading boot, the ordeal of identification, led to the liveliest little essay on the drinking vessels of our ancestors; the “cocker-nuts” and hornes of beasts; the “goords” and ostrich eggs; the “mazers, broad-mouthed dishes, noggins, whiskins, piggins, crinzes, ale-bowls, wassell-bowls, court-dishes, tankards, Kannes, from a pottle to a pint and a pint to a gill;” and, last of all, the great jacks and bombards, which indeed were not unlike the cavalry boot of William III.’s time.
Then we came to a fowl of some sort, most unnamable and amazing. Every species of partlet known to Dunberry, from a barn-door to a guinea-hen, was named without success, while Mr. Sant at the “Seraphine” laughed so that he could hardly sing, and from the hall a peal of merriment went up with every guess. But at last, a dear fat boy, Hoogan by name, was inspired, and to an explosion of chuckles gave up the secret.
“I’ve got un, Muster Sarnt, I’ve got un! It’s a tor-key!”
The lecturer brought down his hands to a little scream of laughter, and sprang to his feet.