"Master ban't home yet," she said; "though I believe I've made it clear to him for the last forty year that one o'clock's the dinner-hour in this house. But there--time be a word to him. 'Time was made for slaves,' he said once to me, in one of his particular foolish moments. 'Go along with you, you silly old monkey!' I answered him. 'Time was made for humans, and we was no more expected to waste it like water, same as you do, than we was meant to waste corn and food and greenstuff and money.' But there--you know him. A watch he carries, but ain't got no more use for it than if he walked in New Jerusalem, where night and day will be done away with for evermore. Us'll begin, Mr. Huggins." They ate and drank; then Philip joined them. "I'm glad to see you," he said. "And I wish you a very happy New Year, Val, and a good few more yet." "Thank you, thank you," answered the veteran. "I hope so too, I'm sure, for the balance of comfort in going on living be still my side, and will be while I've got such a rally of friendly neighbours wishing me to live. This be pretty drinking, sure enough. What do'e call it, Mrs. Weekes, if I ban't making a hole in my manners to ax?" "'Tis broth made from the rames[1] of the Christmas goose," said Mrs. Weekes. "For richness there's nought like goose-bone soup--dripping with fatness, you might say. The very smell of it is a meal." [1] _Rames_--skeleton. Presently Philip pressed Mr. Huggins to take a slice of cold plum-pudding, but the guest reluctantly refused. "Daren't do it, though with all the will in the world, my dears," he declared. "Hot plum-pudding be death, but cold's damnation--using the word in its Bible sense. When you'm up home fourscore, such things must be passed by. Not but what I've had my share, and ate it without fear till seventy; but there's nowhere age tells crueller than in the power of the frame to manage victuals. Well I mind the feast when my granddarter, Hester--now Mrs. Gill--was married. Gill was to work at a wine merchant's in them days, and his master give him a bottle of glittering wine." "Champagne, no doubt," said Mrs. Weekes. "So it was then; and nothing would do but I must top up my other beverages with a glass of it, when it came to be taken at the end of the feast. Next day I wasn't hungry till four in the afternoon! ''Tis age upon me,' I said to myself. 'Tis the sure hand of age. Time was when I could have tossed off a quart of that frothy rubbish an' thought no more of it than a cup of tea; now the organs is losing their grip of liquid food, an' any fancy drinking defies them.' 'Tis the same with solids. If I was to partake of that Christmas pudden, 'twould harbour, like a cannon-ball, under the small ribs on my left side and stick there, very likely, till the spring, unless doctor could dislodge it."