"What I can't make out, my lamb, is how he came to leave 'ee on such a night. That's what I can't make out at all. Now at my bride-ale, for all I was wedding a man old enough to be my ancestor, why it was bride-ale, I do warrant. My aged husband being a publican and a sinner, there was a mort of merry-making, I tell 'ee, and ’twas only when Tabrum slipped on the floor and cracked the back of his faded head as we finished, and me forced to use the holland smock as I won at Ascensiontide smock-racing. Oh! his head was so raw as an egg, and running faster than ever I run for the smock."
"How dreadful," murmured Phyllida, not quite sure whether the narrative should offend her maiden sensibility or not.
"But he was out wi' the hens next morning," the talkative lady continued, "out wi' the hens and scratching away in the garden as hard as any of 'em. But, I tell 'ee, I did souse his head wi' vinegar when I got 'un indoors. The house smelt like a jar of pickle for a week o' Sundays after. But there! Tabrum he gets ascited. Don't matter whether 'tis his own or another's wedding, he's all the while jumping around like a Shrovetide pancake. And talk—well, 'tis babble, babble, and all of men and maids as was under yews twenty green years ago. I tell 'ee, we all laffed when he began telling 'ow he kissed my grandmother coming out of Evening Prayer one frosty night. 'The moon was on her back,' he says, 'ay, and ecod! so was she!' Pretty times, pretty times!"
What farther free confessions would have rippled from Mrs. Tabrum's cherry-ripe lips, it would ill become a modest writer or reader to speculate. They were cut short by the lurching entrance of Charlie and Dicky Maggs, the two postillions.
It would have been hard to find a more ill-favoured pair of ruffians in a day's posting. Both of them had dismounted very regularly at every house of call on the road and arrived at the Basket of Roses with a considerable cargo of bad spirits. The prospect of a long wait, while the horses were changed and their fares supped, encouraged them to farther excesses, and a lucky summons to the drawer to reach down a special cordial gave them an opportunity to finish off the greater part of a bottle of Plymouth Gin.
Fortified by this, annoyed to find that Vernon had not arrived, and half afraid they would lose their wages, they had come in to extract from Miss Courteen as much money as they could, being willing and anxious to drink away every minute of the wait.
"Ve're vet, Miss," said Charles.
"And it vouldn't be amiss if ve could 'ave a little piece of gold as 'ud varm us wiv its shining," said Dicky.
"Mr. Amor will settle your charges," said Phyllida.
"And be off, you ruffians," exclaimed Mrs. Tabrum, enraged by this impudent invasion of the Travellers' Room.