vesters could line up in scores along the table and keep their
Harvest Home with mirth and song, or where two or three friends of
simple tastes could sit about as they pleased and eat and smoke and
talk in comfort and contentment. The ruddy brick floor smiled up at
the smoky ceiling; the oaken settles, shiny with long wear, exchanged
cheerful glances with each other; plates on the dresser grinned at
pots on the shelf, and the merry firelight flickered and played over
everything without distinction.

The kindly Badger thrust them down on a settle to toast themselves at
the fire, and bade them remove their wet coats and boots. Then he
fetched them dressing-gowns and slippers, and himself bathed the
Mole's shin with warm water and mended the cut with sticking-plaster,
till the whole thing was just as good as new, if not better. In the
embracing light and warmth, warm and dry at last, with weary legs
propped up in front of them, and a suggestive clink of plates being
arranged on the table behind, it seemed to the storm-driven animals,
now in safe anchorage, that the cold and trackless Wild Wood just left
outside was miles and miles away, and all that they had suffered in it
a half-forgotten dream.

When at last they were thoroughly toasted, the Badger summoned them to
the table, where he had been busy laying a repast. They had felt
pretty hungry before, but when they actually saw at last the supper
that was spread for them, really it seemed only a question of what
they should attack first where all was so attractive, and whether the
other things would obligingly wait for them till they had time to give
them attention. Conversation was impossible for a long time; and when
it was slowly resumed, it was that regrettable sort of conversation
that results from talking with your mouth full. The Badger did not
mind that sort of thing at all, nor did he take any notice of elbows
on the table, or everybody speaking at once. As he did not go into
Society himself, he had got an idea that these things belonged to the
things that didn't really matter. (We know of course that he was
wrong, and took too narrow a view; because they do matter very much,
though it would take too long to explain why.) He sat in his arm-chair
at the head of the table, and nodded gravely at intervals as the
animals told their story; and he did not seem surprised or shocked at
anything, and he never said, "I told you so," or, "Just what I always
said," or rema