The meal over, and the house-place 'tidied,' which seldom meant more than
the harassing of a few stray specks of dust, Kate in her best fripperies
and mother in her churchgoing gown started for the vicar's. I stood in the
porch and watched them across the cobbled yard and along the road till
they dropped out of sight beyond the bridge.

Then Kate's share of these introductory events became manifest. Search
high, search low, there was no sign of my dear, dumpy Virgil, in yellowing
parchment with red edges. I found Kate's cookery-book, and would have
flung it through the window, but my eye caught the quaint inscription on
the fly-leaf, in her big, pot-hooky handwriting:

"KATHERINE WHEATMAN, her book,
God give her grease to larn to cook.

At the Hanyards.
Jul. 1739."

The simple words stung me like angry hornets. Our red-headed Kate was no
scholar, but at any rate her reading was more useful in our little world
than mine; for this was where she learned the artistry of the dainties and
devices Jack Dobson and I were so fond of. And if I did not soon learn to
do something well, even were it only how to farm my five hundred acres to
a profit, Kate's cooking would really require the miraculous aid suggested
in her unintentional and, to me, biting epigram. I put the book down, and
gave over the hunt for my Virgil. It would probably be useless in any
case, since Kate had a cunning all her own, and had surely bestowed it far
beyond any searching of mine. I contented myself with a fair reprisal,
stowing a stray ribbon of hers in my breeches' pocket, and sat down to