Now it fell on a Summer morning, I being then but newly come home
from the Farmers' College, in the ancient town of Cambridge, that our
whole household was gathered together in our parlour. Mother sat by
the head of the great table, ladling out a savoury mess of porridge,
not rashly, as the custom of some is, but carefully, like a prudent
housewife, guarding her own. And by her side sat MOLLY and BETTY, her
daughters, and next to them the maids, and they that pertained to the
work of the house. First came old POLLY THISTLEDEW, gaunt of face, and
parched of skin, the wrinkles running athwart her face, and over her
hooked nose, like to the rivers drawn with much labour of meandering
pen in the schoolboys' maps, though for such my marks were always low,
I being better skilled in the giving of raps with the closed fist than
in the making of maps with inky fingers--a bootless toil, as it always
hath seemed to me. Next to her sat SALLY, the little milkmaid, casting
coy glances at mother, who would have none of them, but with undue
sternness, as I thought then, and still think, tossed them back to the
shame-faced SALLY. Lower down sat JOHN TOOKER, "GIRT JAN DOUBLEFACE"
he was ever called, not without a sly hint of increasing obesity,
for JOHN, though a mighty man of thews and sinews, was no small
trencherman, and, as the phrase is, did himself right royally whenever
porridge was in question. All these sat, peaceably swallowing, while
I, at the table's foot, faced mother, stirring my steaming bowl with
my forefinger, forgetting the heat thereof, but not daring to wince,
lest BETTY, whose tongue cut shrewdly when she had a mind, should make
sport of me.