My cook, steward, valet, and general factotum is a lad from my own village, cleanly, active, and very willing, though not gifted with too good a memory, and apt to put things in the wrong place—my boots in the oven, for instance!
He sleeps on a cork mattress, in the after-compartment of the Wanderer, and does not snore.
A valet who snored would be an unbearable calamity in a caravan.
Hurricane Bob, my splendid Newfoundland, sleeps in the saloon on a morsel of red blanket. He does snore sometimes, but if told of it immediately places his chin over his fore-paw, and in this position sleeps soundly without any nasal noise.
On our way to Woolhampton—our dining stage—we had many a peep at English rural life that no one ever sees from the windows of a railway carriage. Groups of labourers, male and female, cease work among the mangolds, and, leaning on their hoes, gaze wonderingly at the Wanderer. Even those lazy workaday horses seem to take stock of us, switching their long tails as they do so, in quite a businesslike way. Yonder are great stacks of old hay, and yonder a terribly-red brick farm building, peeping up through a cloudland of wood.
We took Matilda out by the roadside at Woolhampton. This village is very picturesque; it lies in a hollow, and is surrounded by miniature mountains and greenwood. The foliage here is even more beautiful than that around Twyford.
We put up the after-tent, lit the stove, and prepared at once to cook dinner—an Irish stew, made of a rabbit, rent in pieces, and some bacon, with sliced potatoes—a kind of cock-a-leekie. We flavoured it with vinegar, sauce, salt, and pepper. It was an Irish stew—perhaps it was a good deal Irish, but it did not eat so very badly, nor did we dwell long over it.
The fresh air and exercise give one a marvellous appetite, and we were hungry all day long.
But every one we met seemed to be hungry too. A hunk of bread and bacon or bread and cheese appears to be the standing dish. Tramps sitting by the wayside, navvies and roadmen, hawkers with barrows—all were carving and eating their hunks.
A glorious afternoon.