A groom followed with bread, salt, and the
other means of setting forth a meal; and when they had both placed on
the oaken table what they bore in their hands, the falconer observed,
that since he knew the court, it had got harder and harder every day
to the poor gentlemen and yeoman retainers, but that now it was an
absolute flaying of a flea for the hide and tallow. Such thronging to
the wicket, and such churlish answers, and such bare beef-bones, such
a shouldering at the buttery-hatch and cellarage, and nought to be
gained beyond small insufficient single ale, or at best with a single
straike of malt to counterbalance a double allowance of water--"By the
mass, though, my young friend," said he, while he saw the food
disappearing fast under Roland's active exertions, "it is not so to
well to lament for former times as to take the advantage of the
present, else we are like to lose on both sides."
So saying, Adam Woodcock drew his chair towards the table, unsheathed
his knife, (for every one carried that minister of festive
distribution for himself,) and imitated his young companion's example,
who for the moment had lost his anxiety for the future in the eager
satisfaction of an appetite sharpened by youth and abstinence.
In truth, they made, though the materials were sufficiently simple, a
very respectable meal, at the expense of the royal allowance; and Adam
Woodcock, notwithstanding the deliberate censure which he had passed
on the household beer of the palace, had taken the fourth deep draught
of the black jack ere he remembered him that he had spoken in its
dispraise.
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