equip ourselves and our vessel.

We began with charts, sailing directions, and a compass; we got on to a
hammock apiece and a flag; and we rose to a nautical climax by buying
tarpaulin-coats, leggings, and sou'-westers, at a sailors' public-house.
With these sea-stores, and with a noble loaf of home-made bread (the
offering of private benevolence) we left Bristol to scour the friendly
country beyond, in search of further contributions to the larder of the
Tomtit.

The first scene of our ravages was a large country-house, surrounded by
the most charming grounds. From the moment when we and our multifarious
packages poured tumultuous into the hall, to the moment when we and the
said packages poured out of it again into a carriage and a cart, I have
no recollection, excepting meal-times and bedtime, of having been still
for an instant. Escorted everywhere by two handsome, high-spirited boys,
in a wild state of excitement about our voyage, we ranged the house from
top to bottom, and laid hands on everything portable and eatable that we
wanted in it. The inexhaustible hospitality of our hostess was proof
against all the inroads that we could make on it. The priceless gift of
packing perishable commodities securely in small spaces, possessed by a
lady living in the house and placed perpetually at our disposal,
encouraged our propensities for unlimited accumulation. We ravaged the
kitchen garden and the fruit-garden; we rushed into the awful presence
of the cook (with our ham and tongue from Bristol as an excuse) and
ranged predatory over the lower regions. We scaled back-staircases, and
tramped along remote corridors, and burst into secluded lumber-rooms,
with accompaniment of shouting from the boys, and of operatic humming
from Mr. Migott and myself, who happen, among other social
accomplishments, to be both of us musical in a desultory way. We turned
out, in these same lumber-rooms, plans of estates from their neat tin
cases, and put in lemons and loaf-sugar instead. Mr. Migott pounced upon
a stray telescope, and strapped it over my shoulders forthwith. The two
boys found two japanned boxes, with the epaulettes and shako of an
ex-military member of the family inside, which articles of martial
equipment (though these are war-times, and nobody is meritorious or
respectable now who does not wear a uniform) I, with my own irreverent
hands, shook out on the floor; and straightway conveyed the empty cases
down-stairs to be profa