"You'd better take off your wet jacket," she said. "There—hang it before the fire. And," she went on, "there's a cup of coffee still hot, you can have for your breakfast this morning as you're so cold—it'll warm you better nor stir-about; and there's a scrap o' master's bacon you can eat with your bread."
She poured out the coffee, steaming hot, and forked out the bacon from the frying-pan as she spoke, and set all on the corner of the dresser nearest to the fire.
"Thank you, thank you awfully," said Geoff. Oh, how good the coffee smelt! He had never enjoyed a meal so much, and yet, had it been at home, how he would have grumbled! Coffee in a bowl, with brown sugar—bread cut as thick as your fist, and no butter! Truly Geoff was already beginning to taste some of the sweet uses of adversity.
Breakfast over, came the pigs. The farmer had left word that the sty was to be cleaned out, and fresh straw fetched for the pigs' beds; and as Betsy was much more good-natured than Matthew in showing the new boy what was expected of him, he got on pretty well, even feeling a certain pride in the improved aspect of the pig-sty when he had finished. He would have dearly liked to try a scrubbing of the piggies themselves, if he had not been afraid of Matthew's mocking him. But besides this there was not time. At eleven the second lot of milk had to be carted to the station, and with the remembrance of the cross porter Geoff dared not be late. And in the still falling rain he set off again, though, thanks to Mrs. Eames, with a dry jacket, and, thanks to her too, with a horse-rug buckled round him, in which guise surely no one would have recognized Master Geoffrey Tudor.
After dinner the farmer set him to cleaning out the stables, which it appeared was to be a part of his regular work; then there were the pigs to feed again, and at four o'clock the milk-cans to fetch. Oh, how tired Geoff was getting of the lane to the station! And the day did not come to an end without his getting into terrible disgrace for not having rinsed out the cans with boiling water the night before, though nobody had told him to do it. For a message had come from London that the cans were dirty and the milk in danger of turning sour, and that if it happened again Farmer Eames would have to send his milk elsewhere. It was natural perhaps that he should be angry, and yet, as no one had explained about it to Geoff, it seemed rather hard for him to have to take the scolding. Very hard indeed it seemed to him—to proud Geoff, who had never yet taken in good part his mother's mildest reprimands. And big boy though he was, he sobbed himself to sleep this second night of his new life, for it did seem too much, that when he had been trying his very best to please, and was aching in every limb from his unwonted hard work, he should get nothing but scolding. And yet he knew that he was lucky to have fallen into such hands as Farmer Eames's, for, strict as he was, he was a fair and reasonable master.
"I suppose," thought Geoff, "I have never really known what hardships were, though I did think I had plenty to bear at home."
What would Elsa have said had she heard him?