"Why, Dixon, my memory fails me strangely, or I paid you the sum of four pounds odd shillings for corn on Friday last."
"Yes, Sir: but your cow and the chickens eat so much, and then blind Dobbin has four feeds a day, and Farmer Johnson always puts his horse in our stable, and Mrs. Clutterbuck and the ladies fed the jackass the other day in the hired donkeychaise; besides, the rats and mice are always at it."
"It is a marvel unto me," answered Clutterbuck, "how detrimental the vermin race are; they seem to have noted my poor possessions as their especial prey; remind me that I write to Dr. Dissectall to-morrow, good Dixon."
"Yes, Sir, and now I think of it—" but here Mr. Dixon was cut short in his items, by the entrance of a third person, who proved to be Mrs. Clutterbuck.
"What, not dressed yet, Mr. Clutterbuck; what a dawdler you are!—and do look—was ever woman so used? you have wiped your razor upon my nightcap- -you dirty, slovenly—"
"I crave you many pardons; I own my error!" said Clutterbuck, in a nervous tone of interruption.
"Error, indeed!" cried Mrs. Clutterbuck, in a sharp, overstretched, querulous falsetto, suited to the occasion: "but this is always the case- -I am sure, my poor temper is tried to the utmost—and Lord help thee, idiot! you have thrust those spindle legs of yours into your coat-sleeves instead of your breeches!"
"Of a truth, good wife, your eyes are more discerning than mine; and my legs, which are, as you say, somewhat thin, have indued themselves in what appertaineth not unto them; but for all that, Dorothea, I am not deserving of the epithet of idiot, with which you have been pleased to favour me; although my humble faculties are indeed of no eminent or surpassing order—"
"Pooh! pooh! Mr. Clutterbuck, I am sure, I don't know what else you are, muddling your head all day with those good-for-nothing books. And now do tell me, how you could think of asking Mr. Pelham to dinner, when you knew we had nothing in the world but hashed mutton and an apple pudding? Is that the way, Sir, you disgrace your wife, after her condescension in marrying you?"
"Really," answered the patient Clutterbuck, "I was forgetful of those matters; but my friend cares as little as myself, about the grosser tastes of the table; and the feast of intellectual converse is all that he desires in his brief sojourn beneath our roof."