The farmer took them home with him, where his wife fussed over them and bore Miss Culpepper off to the inner reaches of the farmhouse. When they returned, Miss Culpepper was wearing one of the farmer’s wife’s dresses. It wasn’t just two sizes too large for her, it was ten sizes too large. Miss Culpepper looked as if she was wearing a tent.
tenBut at least it was a dry tent.
The farmer loaned Mayhew a shirt and breeches, and they were tent-like on him, too, and they sat in the kitchen and drank cowslip wine while their clothes dried by the fire.
They stayed for three hours. Mrs. Penny, the farmer’s wife, fed them bread and butter and the last of a knuckle of ham, and apologized that she had nothing better to give them. Mayhew told her of the time the commissariat’s wagons had taken the w
