Page:Crotchet Castle - Peacock (1831).djvu/290

 "It is something new under the sun," said the divine, as he sat down, "to see a great dinner without fish."

Fish was for fasts, in the twelfth century.

Well, sir, I prefer our reformed system of putting fasts and feasts together. Not but here is ample indemnity.

Ale and wine flowed in abundance. The dinner passed off merrily; the old harper playing all the while the oldest music in his repertory. The tables being cleared, he indemnified himself for lost time at the lower end of the hall, in company with the old butler and the other domestics, whose attendance on the banquet had been indispensable.

The scheme of Christmas gambols, which