Refreshed by my ablutions, I was
nothing loath to follow him to the kitchen, where a red-faced
little dumpling of a cook set before me such a breakfast as would
have made Mistress Pennyquick stare.
"Eat away," she said, setting her arms akimbo and eying me up and
down as I ravenously began my meal. "Lawks! I don't wonder ye
fainted if 'tis true, as they say, that ye hadn't had bite or sup
for a week. You've a big body to keep a-goin', to be sure;
overgrowed your strength seemingly. The likes of me don't faint."
And at this Susan the housemaid, who had just come in, giggled, and
put her hand over her mouth, and I felt as if my ears had rims of
fire. Would they never have done with their personal allusions?
Mentally I cursed Job and Bill and Topper very heartily, and as
heartily wished that my inches were a little less.
Luckily I was not born without a certain sense of humor. It had
deserted me under stress of what I had gone through during the last
two days, but when my cavities had been well filled with Martha's
excellent viands, I was suddenly able to see myself as I must
appear to others, and I astonished the servants by laying down my
knife and fork, leaning back in my chair, and emitting a long
ripple of laughter.
"Goodness alive!" exclaimed Martha. "Giles said a' was a natural,
and I believe a' spoke true."
"No, no," I spluttered. "My noddle's sound enough. I think; 'tis
only that--that I'm overgrown!"
And with that I laughed again, and my merriment was infectious, for
the round little cook laughed until she dropped exhausted into a
chair, and the housemaid uttered shrill little titters from behind
her hands, bending forward at each explosion, opening her hands to
take a peep at me, and then "going off," as they say, again.
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