"Sweet little lover; we've spent three months in heaven, and only had fresh meat once in all that time."
"Love and fresh meat, 'that's what men are made of.'"
So they supped merrily, and washed up afterwards, both talking at once, and all the time of cattle and domestic details mixed; and then she filled and lit his pipe, he growling amiably of her manifest incompetence in these arts, she being a woman.
"Has the mail come?" he asked.
"Yes; only one wretched paper."
"Give me the wretched paper."
He read a little, while she set a bucket to peel potatoes, using hot water lest the ice should form under her knife.
"Here," he said, "I'm sleepy with the heat of that confounded stove. You take the paper. I'll keep awake best if I peel the potatoes for you."
She looked up, tears swimming in her eyes, "When I was up at the Throne, Mr. Ramsay liked to watch me peeling potatoes."
"What a cad! Well, he gets his deserts—wealth from the Burrows' inventions beyond the very dreams of avarice, and much good may it do him."