and said as calmly as one would ask the time of day:

“Well, if we are all ready, I judge the dinner is.

Come, fall to.”

Ah, well, it was immense; yes, it was a daisy. I don’t know that I ever put a situation together better, or got happier spectacular effects out of the materials available. The blacksmith — well, he was simply mashed. Land! I wouldn’t have felt what that man was feeling, for anything in the world. Here he had been blowing and bragging about his grand meat-feast twice a year, and his fresh meat twice a month, and his salt meat twice a week, and his white bread every Sunday the year round — all for a family of three; the entire cost for the year not above 69.2.6 (sixty-nine cents, two mills and six milrays),