that was not needed, and yet its total effect was to give one a feeling of power, space, comfort, rightness and abundant joy.
The pantry shelves were crowded to the ceiling with the growing treasure of a lavish victualling—an astounding variety and abundance of delicious foods, enough to stock a grocery store or to supply an Arctic expedition—but the like of which he had never seen, or dreamed of, in a country house before.
Everything was there, from the familiar staples of a cook’s necessities to every rare and toothsome dainty that the climates and the markets of the earth produce. There was food in cans, and food in tins, and food in crocks, and food in bottles. There were—in addition to such staple products of the canning art as corn, tomatoes, beans and peas, pears, plums and peaches—such rarer relishes, as herrings, sardines, olives, pickles, mustard, relishes, anchovies. There were boxes of glacéd crystalline fruits from California, and little wickered jars of sharp-spiced ginger fruit from China: there were expensive jellies green as emerald, red as rubies, smoother than whipped cream; there were fine oils and vinegars in bottles, and jars of pungent relishes of every sort and boxes of assorted spices. There was everything that one could think of, and everywhere there was evident the same scrubbed and gleaming cleanliness with which the kitchen shone, but here there was as well that pungent, haunting, spicy odour that pervades the atmosphere of pantries—a haunting and nostalgic fusion of delicious smells whose exact quality it is impossible to define, but which has in it the odours of cinnamon, pepper, cheese, smoked ham, and cloves.
When they got into the kitchen they found Rosalind there: she was standing by the long white table drinking a glass of milk. Joel, in the swift and correct manner with which he gave instructions, at once eager, gentle and decisive, began to show his guest round.
“And look,” he whispered with his soft and yet incisive slowness, as he opened the heavy shining doors of the refrigerator—“here’s the ice-box: if you find anything there you like, just help yourself—”
Food! Food, indeed! The great ice-box was crowded with such an assortment of delicious foods as he had not seen in many years: just to look at it made the mouth begin to water, and aroused the pangs of a hunger so ravenous and insatiate that it was almost more painful than the pangs of bitter want. One was so torn with desire and greedy gluttony as he looked at the maddening plenty of that feast that his will
