awers full of pipes, such places for putting things
away in hollow window-seats, all crammed to the throat with eatables,
drinkables, or savoury condiments; lastly, and to crown all, as typical
of the immense resources of the establishment, and its defiances to all
visitors to cut and come again, such a stupendous cheese!

It is a poor heart that never rejoices--it must have been the poorest,
weakest, and most watery heart that ever beat, which would not have
warmed towards the Maypole bar. Mrs Varden's did directly. She could no
more have reproached John Willet among those household gods, the kegs
and bottles, lemons, pipes, and cheese, than she could have stabbed him
with his own bright carving-knife. The order for dinner too--it might
have soothed a savage. 'A bit of fish,' said John to the cook, 'and some
lamb chops (breaded, with plenty of ketchup), and a good salad, and a
roast spring chicken, with a dish of sausages and mashed potatoes, or
something of that sort.' Something of that sort! The resources of
these inns! To talk carelessly about dishes, which in themselves were
a first-rate holiday kind of dinner, suitable to one's wedding-day, as
something of that sort: meaning, if you can't get a spring chicken, any
other trifle in the way of poultry will do--such as a peacock, perhaps!
The kitchen too, with its great broad cavernous chimney; the kitchen,
where nothing in the way of cookery seemed impossible; where you could
believe in anything to eat, they chose to tell you of. Mrs Varden
returned from the contemplation of these wonders to the bar again, with
a head quite dizzy and bewildered. Her housekeeping capacity was not
large enough to comprehend them. She was obliged to go to sleep. Waking
was pain, in the midst of such immensity.

Dolly in the meanwhile, whose gay heart and head ran upon other matters,
passed out at the garden door, and glancing back now and then (but of
course not wondering whether Joe saw her), tripped away by a path across
the fields with which she was well acquainted, to discharge her mission
at the Warren; and this deponent hath been informed and verily
believes, that you might have seen many less pleasant objects than the
cherry-coloured mantle and ribbons, as they went fluttering along the
green meadows in the bright light of the day, like giddy things as they
were.

Chapter 20

The proud consciousness of her trust, and the great importance she
derived from it, might have