`` But I often dream that I just rise up from the ground and float over the fences and the trees . It 's delightful -- and I always think , ` This IS N'T a dream like it 's always been before . THIS is real ' -- and then I wake up after all , and it 's heart-breaking . '' `` Hurry up , Nan , '' ordered Jem . Nan had produced the banquet-board -- a board literally as well as figuratively -- from which many a feast , seasoned as no viands were elsewhere , had been eaten in Rainbow Valley . It was converted into a table by propping it on two large , mossy stones . Newspapers served as tablecloth , and broken plates and handleless cups from Susan 's discard furnished the dishes . From a tin box secreted at the root of a spruce tree Nan brought forth bread and salt . The brook gave Adam 's ale of unsurpassed crystal . For the rest , there was a certain sauce , compounded of fresh air and appetite of youth , which gave to everything a divine flavour . To sit in Rainbow Valley , steeped in a twilight half gold , half amethyst , rife with the odours of balsam-fir and woodsy growing things in their springtime prime , with the pale stars of wild strawberry blossoms all around you , and with the sough of the wind and tinkle of bells in the shaking tree tops , and eat fried trout and dry bread , was something which the mighty of earth might have envied them . `` Sit in , '' invited Nan , as Jem placed his sizzling tin platter of trout on the table . `` It 's your turn to say grace , Jem . '' `` I 've done my part frying the trout , '' protested Jem , who hated saying grace . `` Let Walter say it . He LIKES saying grace . And cut it short , too , Walt . I 'm starving . '' But Walter said no grace , short or long , just then . An interruption occurred .
`` Who 's coming down XXXXX the manse hill ? ''
For after as at by from into on over to