Омӯзиши лугатҳои дузабона ва бисёрзабона

We got out at Sonning,¹ and went for a walk round the village. It is the most fairy-like nook on the whole river. It is more like a stage village than one built of bricks and mortar. Every house is smoth­ered in roses, and now, in early June, they were bursting forth in clouds of dainty splendour. If you stop at Sonning, put up at the "Bull", behind the church. It is a veritable picture of an old country inn, with a green, square courtyard in front, where, on seats be­neath the trees, the old men group of an evening to drink their ale and gossip over village politics; with low quaint rooms and latticed windows² and awkward stairs and winding passages.

We roamed about sweet Sonning for an hour or so, and then, it being too late to push on past Reading,³ we decided to go back to one of the Shiplake islands, and put up there for the night. It was still early when we got settled and George said that, as we had plenty of time, it would be a splendid opportunity to try a good, slap-up supper. He said he would show us what could be done up the river in the way of cooking, and suggested that, with the vege­tables and the remains of the cold beef and general odds and ends, we should make an Irish stew.⁴

It seemed a fascinating idea. George gathered wood and made a fire, and Harris and I started to peel the potatoes. I should never have thought that peeling potatoes was such an undertaking. The job turned out to be the biggest thing of its kind that I had ever

 been in. We began cheerfully, one might almost say skittishly but our light-heartedness was gone by the time the first potato was fin­ished. The more we peeled, the more peel there seemed to be left on; by the time we had got all the peel off and all the eyes out, there was no potato left — at least none worth speaking of. George came and had a look at it — it was about the size of pea-nut. He . said:

"Oh, that won't do! You're wasting them. You must scrape them."

So we scraped them and that was harder work than peeling. They are such an extraordinary shape, potatoes — all bumps and warts and hollows. We worked steadily for five-and-twenty min­utes, and did four potatoes. Then we struck. We said we should re­quire the rest of the evening for scraping ourselves.

I never saw such a thing as potato-scraping for making a fellow in a mess. It seemed difficult to believe that the potato-scrapings in which Harris and I stood, half-smothered, could have come off four potatoes. It shows you what can be done with economy and care.

George said it was absurd to have only four potatoes in an Irish stew, so we washed half a dozen or so more and put them in with­out peeling. We also put in a cabbage and about half a peck⁵ of peas. George stirred it all up, and then he said that there seemed to be a lot of room to spare, so we overhauled both the hampers, and picked out all the odds and ends and the remnants, and added them to the stew. There were half a pork pie and a bit of cold boiled bacon left, and we put them in. Then George found half a tin of potted salmon, and he emptied that into the pot.

He said that was the advantage of Irish stew: you got rid of such a lot of things. I fished out a couple of eggs that had got cracked, and we put those in. George said they would thicken the gravy.

I forget the other ingredients, but I know nothing was wasted; and I remember that towards the end, Montmorency, who had evinced great interest in the proceedings throughout, strolled away with an earnest and thoughtful air, reappearing, a few min­utes afterwards, with a dead water-rat in his mouth, which he evi­dently wished to present as his contribution to the dinner; whether in a sarcastic spirit, or with a general desire to assist, I cannot say.

We had a discussion as to whether the rat should go in or not. Harris said that he thought it would be all right, mixed up with the other things, and that every little helped; but George stood up for precedent! He said he had never heard of water-rats in Irish stew, and he would rather be on the safe side, and not try experiments.

Harris said: