pomps which doth ever move to reverence."
As the dame turned away, Marco couldn't help slapping on the climax
while the thing was hot; so he said with what was meant for a
languid composure but was a poor imitation of it:
"These suffice; leave the rest."
So there were more yet! It was a fine effect. I couldn't have
played the hand better myself.
From this out, the madam piled up the surprises with a rush that
fired the general astonishment up to a hundred and fifty in the
shade, and at the same time paralyzed expression of it down to
gasped "Oh's" and "Ah's," and mute upliftings of hands and eyes.
She fetched crockery--new, and plenty of it; new wooden goblets
and other table furniture; and beer, fish, chicken, a goose, eggs,
roast beef, roast mutton, a ham, a small roast pig, and a wealth
of genuine white wheaten bread. Take it by and large, that spread
laid everything far and away in the shade that ever that crowd had
seen before. And while they sat there just simply stupefied with
wonder and awe, I sort of waved my hand as if by accident, and
the storekeeper's son emerged from space and said he had come
to collect.
"That's all right," I said, indifferently. "What is the amount?
give us the items."
Then he read off this bill, while those three amazed men listened,
and serene waves of satisfaction rolled over my soul and alternate
waves of terror and admiration surged over Marco's:
2 pounds salt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
8 dozen pints beer, in the wood . . . . . 800
3 bushels wheat . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,700
2 pounds fish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
3 hens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
1 goose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
3 dozen eggs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
1 roast of beef . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
1 roast of mutton . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
1 ham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 800
1 sucking pig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
2 crockery dinner sets . . . . . . . . . 6,000
2 men's suits and underwear . . . . . . . 2,800
1 stuff and 1 linsey-woolsey gown
and underwear . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,600
8 wooden goblets . . . . . . . . . . . . 800
Various table furniture . . . . . . . . .10,000
1 deal table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000
8 stools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,000
2 miller guns, loaded . . . . . . . . . . 3,000
He ceased. There was
|