There was an interruption. While the boy stood staring at the meat, hardly knowing what to do, and rubbing his fingers amidst his shining black hair, Mrs. Copp entered the kitchen, and became acquainted with the state of affairs. She wore a pale muslin gown, as faded as her gentle self, with pale green ribbons. "Dear me," she meekly cried, "all that meat! We could not get through the half of it while it was good? Do you think, James, your master would have any objection to take it back?" "Objection! He'll take it back, ma'am, whether he has any objection or not," cried the positive Sarah. "Now then! who's this?" Somebody seemed to be clattering up in clogs. A woman with the fish: three pairs of large soles and a score or two of herrings, which the captain had bought and paid for. Mrs. Copp, fearing what else might be coming, looked inclined to cry. The exasperated Sarah, more practical, took her hands out of the paste, wiped the flour off them on her check apron, and went darting across the heath without bonnet to the butcher's shop, the boy and his tray of rejected meat slowly following her. There she commenced a wordy war with the butcher, accusing him of being an idiot, with other disparaging epithets, and went marching home in triumph carrying two pounds of veal cutlet. "And that's too much for us," she cried to her mistress, "with all that stock of fish and the pudding. What on earth is to be done with the fish, I don't know. If I fry a pair for dinner, and pickle the herrings, there'll be two pair left. _They_ won't pickle. One had need to have poor folk coming here as they do at the Red Court. Master's gone off with purple streamers flying from his hat; I think he'd more need to put on bells." Scarcely had she got her hands into the flour again, when another person arrived. A girl with a goose. It was in its feathers, just killed. "If you please, ma'am," said she to Sarah, with a curtsey, "mother says she'll stick the other as soon as ever she can catch him; but he's runned away over the common. Mother sent me up with this for 'fraid you should be waiting to pluck him. The captain said they was to come up sharp." Sarah could almost have found in her heart to "stick" her master. She was a faithful servant, and the waste of money vexed her. Mrs. Copp, quite unable to battle with the petty ills of life, left the strong-minded woman to fight against these, and ran away to her parlour. The respected cause of all this, meanwhile, had reached Jutpoint, he and his streamers. There he had to wait a considerable time, but the train came in at last, and brought the travellers.