So, placing the
frying-pan on the grass between my knees, I began to eat with the aid
of my penknife and a hunch of crusty bread, and never in all my days
enjoyed anything more.
In due time, the bacon being despatched together with the greater part
of the loaf and cheese, I lay propped against the tree, blinking in
the sun and drowsily content. But this blissful aftermath was
presently marred by haunting memories of tea, coffee and creamy
chocolate until at last, roused by an insistent and ever-growing
thirst, I arose, minded to seek some means of assuaging this appetite.
Thus, having scrubbed out the frying-pan with a handful of bracken, I
restored it to the tree and set out. After some little while I came on
a brook bubbling pleasantly amid mossy stones and yet, though it
looked sweet and clean enough, I could not bring myself to drink of
it, being too proud-stomached, and must go wandering on, plagued by my
thirst, until, chancing on the same brook or another, I could resist
no longer, and stretching myself full-length upon the bank I stooped
to the murmurous water and drank my fill and found it none so ill,
although a little brackish.
As the day advanced, the cool wind died away so that what with the
heat and this unwonted exercise I grew distressed and was about to
cast myself down in the shade of a hedge, when I espied a small tavern
bowered in trees some little distance along the road, very pleasant to
see, and hasted thitherward accordingly.
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