side.

But her mistress was not slow to mark the diminishing both of the
sirup-pot and the powdered sugar, and she perceived also in which
direction the gingerbreads and all the butter and bacon went. For out
the wench would come, munching rye cakes and licking the sirup from her
fingers.

And she grew as round and thick and fat as if she would burst.

When her mistress took away and kept the key, Toad would poke her head
into the parlour door, and ogle and writhe at the general dealer, and
ask if there was anything to carry up to the store-room. And then he
would go to the window and watch her as she lifted and carried kegs of
fish and casks of sugar and sacks of meal.

He laughed till he coughed again, and, wiping the sweat from his
forehead, would bellow all over the place--"Can any one of my labouring
men carry loads like Toad can?"

And when her master came home, dripping wet and benumbed with cold, from
his first autumn voyage, it was Toad who was first and foremost to meet
him and unbutton his oil-skin jacket for him, and undo his sou'wester,
and help him off with his long sea-boots.

He shivered and shook; but she was not slow to wring out his wet
stockings for him, and fetch no end of birch bark and huge logs. Then
she made up a regular bonfire in the fireplace, and placed him cosily in
the chimney corner.

Madame came to give her husband some warm ale posset; but she was so
annoyed to see the wench whisking and bustling about him, that she went
up into the parlour and howled with rage.

Early in the morning, the general dealer bawled and shouted downstairs
for his long worsted stockings. They could hear that he was peevish and
cross because he had to put on his sea-jacket and cramped water-boots,
and go out again into the foul weather.

He tore open the kitchen door, and asked them furiously how much longer
they were going to keep him waiting.

But now his mouth grew as wide open as the door-way he stood in, and his
face quite lit up with satisfaction.

Round about the walls, and in the warmth of the chimney corner, hung his
sou'wester, and his oil-skin jacket, and his trousers, and every blessed
bit of clothes he was to put on, as dry as tinder. And in the middle of
the kitchen bench he saw his large sea-boots standing there, so snug,
and so nicely greased, that the grease ran right down the shafts and
over the straps.

Such a servant for looking after him and taking care of him he had not
bel