Inside the house his maternal grandmother was sitting by a wood fire.
Before it stood a pipkin, in which something was evidently kept warm.

An eight-legged oak table in the middle of the room was laid for a meal.
This woman of eighty, in a large mob cap, under which she wore a little
cap to keep the other clean, retained faculties but little blunted.

She was gazing into the flames, with her hands upon her knees, quietly re-
enacting in her brain certain of the long chain of episodes, pathetic,
tragical, and humorous, which had constituted the parish history for the
last sixty years. On Swithin's entry she looked up at him in a sideway
direction.

'You should not have waited for me, granny,' he said.

''Tis of no account, my child. I've had a nap while sitting here.

Yes, I've had a nap, and went straight up into my old country again, as usual.
The place was as natural as when I left it,--e'en just threescore years
ago! All the folks and my old aunt were there, as when I was a
child,--yet I suppose if I were really to set out and go there, hardly a
soul would be left alive to say to me, dog how art! But tell Hannah to
stir her stumps and serve supper--though I'd fain do it myself, the poor
old soul is getting so unhandy!' Hannah revealed herself to be much nimbler and several years younger than granny, though of this the latter seemed to be oblivious. When the meal
was nearly over Mrs. Martin produced the contents of the mysterious
vessel by the fire, saying that she had caused it to be brought in from
the back kitchen, because Hannah was hardly to be trusted with such
things, she was becoming so childish.