How the Nurse dreamt that John Bull had banished all the weavers.
We may believe that after so busy a day, as we have been describing, the Nurse was not likely to get a very good night’s rest; starting, tumbling and tossing she had in abundance, but very little sound sleep. She could not shut an eye, but presently she dreamt of some mischief or other. One time she thought the pan boiled over in the fire; at another time, that the cat’s paw was in the custard; and finally, about three o’clock in the morning, she dreamt that John Bull had banished all the weavers from his house; she saw the beams, the tradles, the shuttles, the pirns, all tumbled in a heap into a great black boat; she saw all the weavers posting to embark. When she would have seized a piece of broad cloth, behold it was a great iron cannon! When she put out her hand to save a pirn, lo, it perked up in her face in the make of a pistol! Terror and amazement awaked her; she forgot her resolution never to talk any more to John Bull about his affairs, and thought herself now called upon by heaven, to interpose in behalf of him and his children.
Accordingly, she lost no time in the morning, but went straight to the parlour, where she found John as busy as ever, talking about the orders he was to give in his house: and having told him her dream, earnestly beseeched him to tell her, whether he had any such intention, with relation to the weavers; for she thought that a person, who had ceased to be guided by her, would stick at nothing.
“The woman is crazy,” says John: “I am only thinking how I may best secure the peace and welfare of my family, and how to keep off rogues; and you ask me, if I am to banish my weavers? I’ll defend my weavers to the last drop of my blood; they shall fare no worse than I do; late or early, if they are molested, I shall be with them, and I know that they will stand by me against all the world.”
“What better protection can you desire for yourself or them,” says the nurse, “than your own game-keeper, or Rousterdivel? It would do one good to see, how that fine tall fellow will stop and turn, and do what he is bid.”
“A plague take the woman,” says John, “with her Rousterdivel; do you think that I am a coward, a scoundrel, a beast, a blockhead, a milk-sop, that I must always run for protection to other people? I tell you again, that I am able to defend myself, and that I have people enow about my house to stand by me.”
“And how do you propose that they should stand by you?” says the nurse: “When Lewis sends over his game-keepers, with their guns and their sabres, who will stand by you then?”
“Odso,” says John, “cannot my people have guns and sabres as well as they?”
“Alas! then,” says the nurse, “my dream is read. You will not have a weaver in your house in three days, if you go on at that rate: who do you think will sit quietly on a loom, with guns and pistols pointing at them in every corner, and that boy George putting crackers in the candles, and firing his pistols at sparrows, and shooting the neighbours cats when they come about the hedges? See who can settle to work for you, if they are in perpetual danger of having their eyes blown out with squibs, serpents and rackets? Do you think a tradesman can do any good if he is scared at that rate?”
“Scared!” says John, “you don’t think that a weaver will be scared when he turns game-keeper, and I have none better on my grounds. If any of my people are afraid of a gun, so much the more shame to them and to me; it is the very thing I want to correct, by using them a little to what may be necessary for their own defence and mine.”