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The garrison of sixty, under Captain Van der Delf, instantly surrendered. The victor allowed these troops to go off scot free, saying that there had been blood enough shed that day. Every standard borne by the Spaniards in the battle-thirty-eight in number was taken, besides nearly all their arms. The banners were sent to the Hague to be hung up in the great hall of the castle.
The table had been spread for the mixed midday meal of dinner and tea, which was common among frugal countryfolk. "The parishioners about here," continued Mrs. Day, not looking at any living being, but snatching up the brown delf tea-things, "are the laziest, gossipest, poachest, jailest set of any ever I came among. And they'll talk about my teapot and tea-things next, I suppose!"
A knife and fork, which had not been worn out by overcleaning, flanked a cracked delf plate; a nearly empty mustard-pot, placed on one side of the table, balanced a salt- cellar, containing an article of a greyish, or rather a blackish, mixture, upon the other, both of stoneware, and bearing too obvious marks of recent service.
I reached the house and looked in the narrow window. A greasy looking candle burned on the rough table, casting flickering shadows around the low ceiling and walls, over the pewter dishes and shining delf. It was a kind of comfort to my poor heart, when I saw old Nanny herself, seated on a rocking chair before the fire.
Everything used in the house was of the coarsest description the linen like sack-cloth, but speckless; the delf as thick and rough as if made for sailors; the floors mostly of brick or stone; the furniture of unpainted deal. Over each bed, which is only a board on trestles covered with heavy sacking, is a common crucifix and a sprig of box or olive blessed on Palm Sunday.
'I don't like trusting my china to the hands of a tender-foot. 'Quite right, though your china would prove an excellent means of defence at long range. It was delf, a quarter of an inch thick. So I smoked while he washed up, swept, dusted, and arranged the room. After the room was ordered to his taste, we proceeded to hold council. He could offer dinner, magic lantern, music.
Thus equipped, he would manfully sally forth with pipe in mouth to besiege some fair damsel's obdurate heart not such a pipe, good reader, as that which Acis did sweetly tune in praise of his Galatea, but one of true delf manufacture, and furnished with a charge of fragrant tobacco.
The garrison of sixty, under Captain Van der Delf, instantly surrendered. The victor allowed these troops to go off scot free, saying that there had been blood enough shed that day. Every standard borne by the Spaniards in the battle-thirty-eight in number was taken, besides nearly all their arms. The banners were sent to the Hague to be hung up in the great hall of the castle.
Many of the chairs, although not worn by age, wanted legs or backs, evidently from ill-usage alone the grate was without fire-irons a mahogany bookcase that stood in a recess to the right of the fireplace, with glass doors and green silk blinds, had the glass all broken and the silk stained almost out of its original color; whilst inside of it, instead of books, lay a heterogeneous collection of garden seeds in brown paper an almanac of twenty years' standing, a dry ink-bottle, some broken delf, and a large collection of blue-moulded shoes and boots, together with an old blister of French flies, the lease of their farm, and a great number of their receipts for rent.
"If ye stand there affrontin' our poor oul delf all night we won't haave aany tea at all!" Mary said. The humor had gone from my face and speech from my tongue. I felt as one feels when he looks for the last time upon the face of his best friend. Mary laughed when I laid the old cup on a comparatively new saucer at my place.
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