It was a raw autumn evening. The drivers were warming themselves round the fire. It was the light from the latter that had been visible so far away. An ostler took my horse in charge to give him some oats in the stable. I entered the tap-room where a good many men were drinking, while two sleepy gipsies, one with a lute and one with a zither, were playing monotonously in a corner. I was hungry and cold. The damp had pierced through me.
“Where’s your mistress?” I asked the boy behind the bar.
“By the kitchen fire.”
“It ought to be warmer there,” I said, and passed through the vestibule, out of the tap-room into the kitchen.
It was very clean in the kitchen, and the smell was not like that in the tap-room, of fur and boots and damp shoes; there was a smell of new-made bread. Madame Manjoala was looking after the oven.
“Well met, Mistress Marghioala.”
“Welcome, Mr. Fanica.”
“Is there a chance of getting anything to eat?”
“Up to midnight even, for respectable people like yourself.”
Mistress Marghioala quickly gave orders to one of the servants to lay a table in the next room, and then, going up to the hearth, said: