The old woman heard him out, and with a bow at every step she went to receive the elder and the four of them, and they all came in through the brushwood gate and sat down in the thatched cottage.

一步一拜, a step and a bow, a step and a bow, is the form of an act of extreme reverence — pilgrims go up sacred mountains this way, prostrating at every pace. An old woman doing it across her own yard is offering the highest thing she has. 茅舍 takes 舍 as shè again.

Mother and son together knocked their heads and gave thanks past all telling, and hurried about in a flurry to get some plain fare together by way of repayment.

稱謝不盡 is the second of the two places in this chapter where the negative has to follow a reading that the tables raise after the fact — thanks without end, and the character for exhausting comes out higher than it starts. 素齋 is meatless food fit for monks, and 慌慌忙忙 doubles both characters of hurry into a fluster.