On entering the farmhouse, Kenelm's host conducted him straight into the kitchen, and cried out, in a hearty voice, to a comely middle-aged dame, who, with a stout girl, was intent on culinary operations, "Hulloa! old woman, I have brought you a guest who has well earned his supper, for he has done the work of two, and I have promised him a bed."
The farmer's wife turned sharply round. "He is heartily welcome to supper. As to a bed," she said doubtfully, "I don't know." But here her eyes settled on Kenelm; and there was something in his aspect so unlike what she expected to see in an itinerant haymaker, that she involuntarily dropped a courtesy, and resumed, with a change of tone, "The gentleman shall have the guest-room: but it will take a little time to get ready; you know, John, all the furniture is covered up."
"Well, wife, there will be leisure eno' for that. He don't want to go to roost till he has supped."
"Certainly not," said Kenelm, sniffing a very agreeable odour.
"Where are the girls?" asked the farmer.
"They have been in these five minutes, and gone upstairs to tidy themselves."
"What girls?" faltered Kenelm, retreating towards the door. "I thought you said you had no nieces."
"But I did not say I had no daughters. Why, you are not afraid of them, are you?"
"Sir," replied Kenelm, with a polite and politic evasion of that question, "if your daughters are like their mother, you can't say that they are not dangerous."
"Come," cried the farmer, looking very much pleased, while his dame smiled and blushed, "come, that's as nicely said as if you were canvassing the county. 'Tis not among haymakers that you learned manners, I guess; and perhaps I have been making too free with my betters."