If you are a stranger, and remember what you have been charged elsewhere in smoky cities for tough beef, stringy mutton, waxy potatoes, and the very bread black with smuts, you select half a sovereign and drop it on the upper plate.

In the twinkling of an eye eight shillings are returned to you; the charge is a florin only.
They live well in Fleeceborough, as every fresh experience of the place will prove; they have plentiful food, and of the best quality; poultry abounds, for every resident having a great garden (many, too, have paddocks) keeps fowls; fresh eggs are common; as for vegetables and fruit, the abundance is not to be described.

A veritable cornucopia--a horn of plenty--seems to forever pour a shower of these good things into their houses.

And their ale! To the first sight it is not tempting.

It is thick, dark, a deep wine colour; a slight aroma rises from it like that which dwells in bonded warehouses.