Pork-pie--1 plateful. Roast goose with apple sauce--1 plateful. Roast fowl with ham--1 plateful. Currant cake with cheese--1 slice. Blancmange--1 plateful. Jelly: yellow--1 plateful. Jelly: pink--1 plateful. Mince-pie with cheese--One. Muffins, hard-cakes, brown bread, white bread--company manners fix no limit to these details. Tea--Two cups; three if you've cheek to ask for them. Now I think you'll agree that was a square meal for one man; but you must remember Jim was six feet four in his stockings, and six feet four requires a lot of support. It is a mercy all had not the stature and the appetites of Jim and myself, else Ruth and Miriam would not have been busy, as they were for many a day after, making up little parcels of the fragments that remained, carrying them to those of our neighbours who most needed such help, that they too might rejoice in Miriam's good fortune. We had got to the final stage of the repast--the last cup of tea, the one in which the elders gravely stirred half a wineglass of Jamaica rum, and to which even Ruth and Miriam, faintly protesting, were induced to add a tiny spoonful just to flavour it, when Mary startled us all by saying: "Han yo' clapt e'en o' Ephraim o' Burnplatts up this way lately?" "Why, Mary," I said, for no one else seemed able to find a word, "I didn't know you and Ephraim were acquaint." "No more we are," she made answer. "Aw dunnot suppose he knows me fro' Adam, leastwise fro' Eve. But aw know him, an' aw'n seen him more nor once sin Abe here's bin ligged o' his back. He's bin hangin' about th' Weighkey a goodish bit--him an' Tom Bradbury fro' Bill's o Jack's are just as thick as thieves bi all accaants. Yo' see, Mr. Holmes, aw dunnot go abaat much missen, as yo'll weel understan', for what wi' bakin', an' brewin', an' fettlin', an' pearkin' th' pieces, an' mendin' Jim's clo'es, an' your Abe's, an' mi own, aw'n mi hands full, an' aw'n no time for callin' an' runnin' abaat fro' door to door sortin' he-says an' oo-says; but th' hands at Wrigley Mill's in an' out o' yar haase for one thing an' another till it's awmost like Lee Gap, an' keep th' door-step onny bit like one woman cannot do, an' use th' scraper an' th' door-mat they winnot do. But, of coorse, aw cannot shut mi ears to what's goin' on. An' they do say 'at Ephraim's fair thrown in wi' them Bradburys, which who'd ha' thowt it after that do at Huddersfilt ovver them hares. But they do say 'at when they aren't at "The Bell" at Delph, or at "Th' Cross Keys," or at "Th' Swan," reelin' fro' one public-haase to another, Ephraim spends all his time at "Th' Moorcock" at Bill's o' Jack's. An', what's more, they sen 'at he's larnin' to be a gamekeeper, an' is goin' to be takken on bi th' Bradburys an' live wi' 'em reg'lar--which set a thief to catch a thief's bin done afore now"--and here Mary paused for breath, or, as Jim put it, "bet back a bit for another jump."