He had planned
an elaborate high tea for six o'clock or thereabouts, and a good
roaring supper to come on about eleven. Being a bachelor of
rather retiring habits, the whole of the preparations devolved
upon himself and his trusty man and familiar, Robert Creedle, who
did everything that required doing, from making Giles's bed to
catching moles in his field. He was a survival from the days when
Giles's father held the homestead, and Giles was a playing boy.
These two, with a certain dilatoriousness which appertained to
both, were now in the heat of preparation in the bake-house,
expecting nobody before six o'clock. Winterborne was standing
before the brick oven in his shirt-sleeves, tossing in thorn
sprays, and stirring about the blazing mass with a long-handled,
three-pronged Beelzebub kind of fork, the heat shining out upon
his streaming face and making his eyes like furnaces, the thorns
crackling and sputtering; while Creedle, having ranged the pastry
dishes in a row on the table till the oven should be ready, was
pressing out the crust of a final apple-pie with a rolling-pin.
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