“I didn’t think of that,” rejoined I, “or I should not have been so envious of ye all day.”
“Might as well have been at home,” returned the old hound, in a grumbling humour.
“You found?” said I.
“Of course we did,” he replied. “We never get a blank day. They are too staunch and true preservers in our country for that to take place.”
My companion was now called to take his turn in the warm bath, which Mark had prepared, and after his body and limbs were well laved, he was ordered into the lodging-room, where there was plenty of clean straw to roll in.
“There’s nothing like this,” said Trimbush, rubbing his back, with all his feet in the air. “There’s nothing like this,” repeated he, “after a cold, wretched day. It warms one’s blood, prevents rheumatism, and is a real blessed preventative to many disorders. I like my bath as well as my meal.”
“You are no bad judge,” replied I, laughing.
“I should say not,” returned he. “I should say that I was anything but a bad judge between what’s good for us and what is not.”
After all had been washed, and each had enjoyed a good tumble among the straw, Mark summoned them to the feeding-room, where a bountiful meal was ready for their sharpened appetites. When this was finished—and it did not occupy many minutes—they were conducted to another lodging-house, so that there might be no damp or chill remaining from the wet straw in the one used as the drying apartment. Nothing could be more perfect than all the arrangements made for our health and comfort, and yet, in themselves, they consisted of little more than a simple method of doing that well, which would have occupied quite as much time and trouble in the end to do badly.
“There,” remarked Trimbush, with his ribs sticking out as if they were well lined within, “now I feel comfortable, and at peace with all the world.”