never tasted a better one. The huge piles of new baked bread, the
sweet farm butter, already delicious with the flavour of new
grass, the bacon and eggs, the potatoes, the rhubarb sauce, the
great plates of new, hot gingerbread and, at the last, the
custard pie--a great wedge of it, with fresh cheese. After the
first ravenous appetite of hardworking men was satisfied, there
came to be a good deal of lively conversation. The girls had some
joke between them which Ben was trying in vain to fathom. The
older son told how much milk a certain Alderney cow had given,
and Mr. Stanley, quite changed now as he sat at his own table
from the rather grim farmer of the afternoon, revealed a capacity
for a husky sort of fun, joking Ben about his potato-planting and
telling in a lively way of his race with me. As for Mrs. Stanley,
she sat smiling behind her tall coffee pot, radiating good cheer
and hospitality. They asked me no questions at all, and I was so
hungry and tired that I volunteered no information.

After supper we went out for half or three quarters of an hour to
do some final chores, and Mr. Stanley and I stopped in the cattle
yard and looked over the cows, and talked learnedly about the
pigs, and I admired his spring calves to his hearts content, for
they really were a fine lot. When we came in again the lamps had
been lighted in the sitting-room and the older daughter was at
the telephone exchanging the news of the day with some
neighbour--and with great laughter and enjoyment. Occasionally
she would turn and repeat some bit of gossip to the family, and
Mrs. Stanley would claim:

"Do tell!"