side she was on, she would have said, "For the King"; but in
her heart she had no enmity to either. Her son was a warmer politician;
Jenny, being sixteen, was a much warmer still, and as Robin
Featherstone, her hero, was a Cavalier, so of course was she.

We have given the worthy farmer and his family a good while to sit down
to supper, which that night included a kettle of furmety, a mermaid pie,
and a taffaty tart. What were they? A very reasonable question,
especially as to the mermaid pie, since mermaids are rather scarce
articles in the market. Well, a mermaid pie was made of pork and eels,
and was terribly rich and indigestible; a taffaty tart was an apple-pie,
seasoned with lemon-peel and fennel-seed; and the receipt for furmety--a
very famous and favourite dish with our forefathers--I give as it stands
in a curious little book, entitled, _The Compleat Cook_, printed in
1683.

"Take a quart of cream, a quarter of a pound of French barley, the
whitest you can get, and boyl it very tender in three or four several
waters, and let it be cold; then put both together. Put into it a blade
of mace, a nutmeg cut in quarters, a race of ginger cut in four or five
pieces, and so let it boyl a good while, still stirring, and season it
with sugar to your taste; then take the yolks of four eggs, and beat
them with a little cream, and stir them into it, and so let it boyl a
little after the eggs are in: then have ready blanched and beaten twenty
almonds (kept from oyling), with a little rosewater; then take a boulter
strainer, and rub your almonds with a little of your furmety through the
strainer, but set on the fire no more: and stir in a little salt, and a
little sliced nutmeg, pickt out of the great pieces of it, and put it in
a dish, and serve it."

The farmhouse family consisted only of Farmer Lavender, his mother, and
his two daughters, Kate and Jenny. But fifteen people sat down to
supper: for the whole household, including the farmer's men down to the
little lad who scared the crows, all ate together in the big kitchen.
Mrs Lavender sat at the head of the table, the farmer at the other end,
with Jenny on his right hand: for there was in the father's heart a very
warm place for his motherless Jenny.

"All ready to set forth, my lass?" he said gently--perhaps a little
sadly. "Yes, Father, all ready."

"Art thou glad to go, child?"

"I'd like well to see the world, Father."

"Well, well! I mind the time whe