across like a Barbary ape, he entered
the window and stepped down inside. There was something anomalous in
being close to the familiar furniture without having first seen his
father, and its silent, impassive shine was not cheering; it was as if
his relations were all dead, and only their tables and chests of drawers
left to greet him. He went downstairs and seated himself in the dark
parlour. Finding this place, too, rather solitary, and the tick of the
invisible clock preternaturally loud, he unearthed the tinder-box,
obtained a light, and set about making the house comfortable for his
father's return, divining that the miller had gone out to meet him by the
wrong road.

Robert's interest in this work increased as he proceeded, and he bustled
round and round the kitchen as lightly as a girl. David, the indoor
factotum, having lost himself among the quart pots of Budmouth, there had
been nobody left here to prepare supper, and Bob had it all to himself.
In a short time a fire blazed up the chimney, a tablecloth was found, the
plates were clapped down, and a search made for what provisions the house
afforded, which, in addition to various meats, included some fresh eggs
of the elongated shape that produces cockerels when hatched, and had been
set aside on that account for putting under the next broody hen.

A more reckless cracking of eggs than that which now went on had never
been known in Overcombe since the last large christening; and as Loveday
gashed one on the side, another at the end, another longways, and another
diagonally, he acquired adroitness by practice, and at last made every
son of a hen of them fall into two hemispheres as neatly as if it opened
by a hinge. From eggs he proceeded to ham, and from ham to kidneys, the
result being a brilliant fry.

Not to be tempted to fall to before his father came back, the returned
navigator emptied the whole into a dish, laid a plate over the top, his
coat over the plate, and his hat over his coat. Thus completely stopping
in the appetizing smell, he sat down to await events. He was relieved
from the tediousness of doing this by hearing voices outside; and in a
minute his father entered.

'Glad to welcome ye home, father,' said Bob. 'And supper is just ready.'

'Lard, lard--why, Captain Bob's here!' said Mrs. Garland.

'And we've been out waiting to meet thee!' said the miller, as he entered
the room, followed by representatives of the houses of Cripples