[Gutenberg 31399] • Banked Fires

[...] Servants, engaged in culinary duties before open fire-places, gossiped in lowered tones of standing grievances: It was like the exactness of the Great to require a five-course dinner, served with due attention to refinement and etiquette in untoward circumstances, such as an improvised cooking-range of clay and bricks, a hurried collection of twigs, some charcoal, and every convenience conspicuous by its absence! And what a village to rely upon!-no shops; only a weekly market with nothing suitable to the wants of white men fastidious and[...].