in respectable families, and the poor thought that the rich were
entirely in the right of it to lead a jolly life; besides, their
feasting caused a multiplication of orts, which were the heirlooms
of the poor. Betty Jay scented the boiling of Squire Cass's hams,
but her longing was arrested by the unctuous liquor in which they
were boiled; and when the seasons brought round the great
merry-makings, they were regarded on all hands as a fine thing for
the poor. For the Raveloe feasts were like the rounds of beef and
the barrels of ale--they were on a large scale, and lasted a good
while, especially in the winter-time. After ladies had packed up
their best gowns and top-knots in bandboxes, and had incurred the
risk of fording streams on pillions with the precious burden in
rainy or snowy weather, when there was no knowing how high the water
would rise, it was not to be supposed that they looked forward to a
brief pleasure. On this ground it was always contrived in the dark
seasons, when there was little work to be done, and the hours were
long, that several neighbours should keep open house in succession.
So soon as Squire Cass's standing dishes diminished in plenty and
freshness, his guests had nothing to do but to walk a little higher
up the village to Mr. Osgood's, at the Orchards, and they found hams
and chines uncut, pork-pies with the scent of the fire in them, spun
butter in all its freshness--everything, in fact, that appetites
at leisure could desire, in perhaps greater perfection, though not
in greater abundance, than at Squire Cass's.

For the Squire's wife had died long ago, and the Red House was
without that presence of the wife and mother which is the fountain
of wholesome love and fear in parlour and kitchen; and this helped
to account not only for there being more profusion than finished
excellence in the holiday provisions, but also for the frequency