"Take off your shoes and stockings, won't you?" said the bailiff in
matter-of-course tones, just as old ladies ask each other to take off
their bonnets; "there's a little baby canal just over the ridge."
The joys of dipping one's feet in cool running water after a hot
walk have yet to be described. I could write pages about them.
There was a mill-stream when I was young with little fishes in it,
and dropped leaves that spun round, and willows and alders that
leaned over it and kept it cool, and but this is not the story of my
life.
When they came back, on rested, damp, pink feet, tea was made
and poured ouy delicious tea with as much milk as ever you
wanted, out of a beer bottle with a screw top, and cakes, and
gingerbread, and plums, and a big melon with a lump of ice in its
heart a tea for the gods!
This thought must have come to Jimmy, for he said suddenly,
removing his face from inside a wide-bitten crescent of
melon-rind:
"Your feast's as good as the feast of the Immortals, almost."
"Explain your recondite allusion," said the grey-flannelled host;
and Jimmy, understanding him to say, "What do you mean?"
replied with the whole tale of that wonderful night when the
statues came alive, and a banquet of unearthly splendour and
deliciousness was plucked by marble hands from the trees of the
lake island.
When he had done the bailiff said: "Did you get all this out of a
book?"
"No," said Jimmy, "it happened.
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