Everything was on the grand scale. It was just such a meal as the eighteenth-century post-houses gave passengers on the road before railways had come to ruin appetites. It was a true Hogarthian dinner; not a meal to approach with a pingling stomach; not a matter of "a ragout of fatted snails and a chicken not two hours from the shell"; but mighty geese, and a piece of beef as big as a Dartmoor tor--the lusty cook's knees bowed as he staggered in with it--mounds of vegetables, pyramids of dumplings, gravy enough to float a fishing-smack, and beer and cider sufficient to bathe in. The diners were in complete sympathy with the vastness of the feast, being mostly from ravenous Dartmoor. A beefy farmer was voted to the chair, and carved until perspiration trickled down his nose. A gentleman of severe appearance insisted upon saying grace, but nobody took any notice. They were too busy sniffing, and one who had been already helped was making strange noises with his lips and throat. Boodles was laughing at his manners, and pinching Aubrey's hand. "Such fun," she whispered. "Ladies first," cried the carver. "Quite right," gasped the man who had been served first, having snatched the plate from the waiter as he was about to pass him. Then he gaped and admitted an entire dumpling, nearly as big as a cricket-ball, and had nothing else to say, except "Bit more o' that stuffing," for ten minutes. "What am I to do with it?" sighed Boodles, when the heaped plate was set in front of her. "Eat 'en, my dear!" said a commoner, who was wolfing bread until his time came. "'Tis Goosie Vair," he added encouragingly. "Take it, Aubrey," she said, with a slight titter. "Go ahead," he replied. "Eat what you can, and leave the rest." "I wish we were alone," she whispered. "These people are pigs." Had they been alone they would probably have fed off the same plate, and given each other kisses between every mouthful. As it was they could do nothing, except play with each other's feet beneath the table. Everybody else was hard at work. Faces were swollen on every side, and the sounds were more suggestive of a farmyard at feeding time than a party of immortal beings taking a little refreshment. There was no conversation. All that had been done during the time of waiting. "'Tis a butiful day, sure enough," and "A proper fine vair," had exhausted the topics. Boodles was rather too severe when she called the feasters pigs, but they were not pleasant to watch, and they seemed to have lost the divine spark somehow. Philosophers might have wondered whether the species was worth reproducing.