t noon that day I planned to pass the night at a
village where, as I was informed at a small country town I had rested
in, there was a nice inn--"The Fox and Grapes"--to put up at, but when
I arrived, tired and hungry, I was told that I could not have a bed and
that the only thing to do was to try Norton, which also boasted an inn.
It was hard to have to turn some two or three miles out of my road at
that late hour on a chance of a shelter for the night, but there was
nothing else to do, so on to Norton I went with heavy steps, and arrived
a little after sunset, more tired and hungry than ever, only to be told
at the inn that they had no accommodation for me, that their one spare
room had been engaged! "What am I to do, then?" I demanded of the
landlord. "Beyond this village I cannot go to-night--do you want me to
go out and sleep under a hedge?" He called his spouse, and after some
conversation they said the village baker might be able to put me up, as
he had a spare bedroom in his house. So to the baker's I went, and
found it a queer, ramshackle old place, standing a little back from the
village street in a garden and green plot with a few fruit trees
growing on it. To my knock the baker himself came out--a mild-looking,
flabby-faced man, with his mouth full, in a very loose suit of
pyjama-like garments of a bluish floury colour. I told him my story, and
he listened, swallowing his mouthful, then cast his eyes down and rubbed
his chin, which had a small tuft of hairs growing on it, and finally
said, "I don't know. I must ask my wife. But come in and have a cup of
tea--we're just having a cup ourselves, and perhaps you'd like one."

I could have told him that I should like a dozen cups and a great many
slices of bread-and-butter, if there was nothing else more substantial
to be had. However, I only said, "Thank you," and followed him in to
where his wife, a nice-looking woman, with black hair and olive face,
was seated behind the teapot. Imagine my surprise when I found that
besides tea there was a big hot repast on the table--a ham, a roast
fowl, potatoes and cabbage, a rice pudding, a dish of stewed fruit,
bread-and-butter, and other things.

"You call this a cup of tea!" I exclaimed delightedly. The woman
laughed, and he explained in an apologetic way that he had formerly
suffered grievously from indigestion, so that for many years his life
was a burden to him, until he discovered that if he took one big meal a
day