Foley has laid the cloth. The kettle is boiling, the eggs and rashers are ready to put in the frying-pan, the Rippingille oil-stove is in a little tent made of mats under the caravan. There is nothing in the shape of cooking this stove will not perform.
Now Bob must have his early run, and while I am walking with him I call a bunch of the seedling grasses Polly loves so well, for I believe with Norman McLeod, D.D. “I think nothing of that man’s religion,” said that truly great and good man, “whose cat and dog are not the better for it.”
We have not a caravan cat, but Polly is an excellent substitute.
I return and once more fasten Bob on the coupé, but he now insists on having the front door open that he may watch me at breakfast, and get the tit-bits. How bright, and clean, and pleasant the saloon looks! There are garden flowers in the crystal boat, and a splendid bouquet of wild flowers and ferns that I culled in the woods yesterday morning stands in the bracket beneath one of the windows; crimson foxgloves there are, rare and beautiful ox-eye daisies, and a score of others of every colour and shade.
The sun is streaming in through the panes and shimmering on the red lamp-glasses; the table is laid to perfection, the tea is fragrant, the eggs and bacon done to a turn, and the bread as white as snow. The milk, too, is newly from that very cow who was playing the trombone so noisily last night in the meadow near me, and the butter all that could be desired. And yet some of these dainties are wondrous cheap up here in Yorks; for that butter we paid but eleven pence a pound, fourteen new-laid eggs we secured for a shilling, the bacon cost but sixpence, while three halfpence buys me a jugful of the richest of milk. Who would not be a gipsy?
But breakfast is soon discussed and everything cleared away, the spoons and dishes are washed beneath the tent, the hind tables having been let down to facilitate matters. In half an hour or less the pantry is as bright and tidy as eye could wish to see. The tent itself is taken down and stowed away, the ladder is shipped and secured, buckets and mats, and nosebags and chains, fastened beneath the caravan, then the steps are put up, and the after-door closed and locked. The horses are now put-to; I myself have one last walk round the Wanderer to see that everything is in its place and no drawer left unlocked, then away we rattle right gaily O!
To-day the gate that leads to the meadow is narrow, it does not give us two inches to spare at each side. I have to walk backwards in front of the horses to guide the coachman in his exit. But John has a keen eye, and in a few moments we are in the road.
Nothing has been forgotten, and the landlord of the Stalled Ox gives us kindly good morning and wishes us bon voyage. More than one friendly hand is waved, too, and some hats are lifted, for the good people, having soon settled in their minds that we were neither in the Cheap-Jack line nor Salvation soldiers, have promoted me to the dignity of baronet. This is nothing new. Some scions of nobility are actually caravanning around somewhere, and I am often supposed to be one of them.
I travel incog, and do not care whom I am taken for, whether Cheap-Jack, noble earl, or political agent. I now let down the front seat, and Hurricane Bob withdraws to the quiet seclusion of the pantry, where he rests on cushions to fend him from the jolting.
Pea-blossom invariably nudges Corn-flower with her nose before starting. This is to make him straighten out and take the first pull at the caravan. He never refuses, and once it is in motion they both settle soberly down to their work.