A big moon shone in a solid sort of way in mid-heaven, and was repeated at intervals right down through the picture, as though the scene-painters would say: 'This is the moon, it is rising now, and there it is fully risen.' But I was assured that this was the result of some accident by fire that had taken place years ago in the said drop-scene, and that these moons were, after all, only the patches that repaired the beautiful picture. Three fiddlers and a piano were making lively music when the bell tinkled and the curtain went up. It was a very simple scene--the village carpenter sitting in his shop working away at a stool, but it was to the life; and the Jacob who was working there, with his red handkerchief round his throat, spoke and acted to the life, and well he might--he was a village carpenter. A tourist came upon the scene, and got very little change out of Jacob, and less still out of Jacob's mother, Mrs. Rawlinson, {75} who (after a very amusing dialogue with the tourist) determined to allow him to be her lodger. She made him pay double the usual price because he asked for 'sec a new faddlement as a seven o'clock dinner.' Dolly, the maid, comes in with a handkerchief bound over her head, as is the fashion of the North-country maids when they are dusting or brushing up. They fall to talk: Mrs. Rawlinson: 'I'se goin' to have mair nor sebben shillings a room this time, but I was forced to ask a good price, for he'll be wanting late dinners, and a' maks o' cooking and faddlements. What does ta think wawmlets'll be, Dolly?' Dolly: 'Nay, I never heard tell o' sec a thing.' Mrs. Rawlinson: 'And grilled bones to his breakfast; but I kna' what them'll be, just a marra bone served up hot in a napkin. I can mannish that finely. Then he talked about a dish o' curry; that'll certainly be some mak o' a French stew, made rare and hot wid pepper and an onion or two.' Dolly: 'What, thou's goin' to be sadly tewed.' Mrs. Rawlinson: 'Nay. I was nobbut a bit put about at first, but I mean to ask {76} Betty Braithwaite to lend me her beuk as larns yan to mak hundreds and hundreds of things 'at I never heard of, nor naebody else, I wud think.' As long as I live I shall remember the delightful get-up of this said Mrs. Rawlinson, with her high black cap and flower in it, and her old-fashioned criss-cross shawl, and her spotless white 'brat'; and the way in which she pronounced the word 'omelette' as 'waumlett' convulsed the house.