“Oh my word! Fancy me telling him! He’d jump down my throat with both feet afore I’d opened my mouth. He’s not to be spoken to, he isn’t. He’s my-lord, he is. You mustn’t look, or you’re done for.”
Alvina laughed. She knew they all liked him for browbeating them, and having a heart over and above.
Sometimes he was given a good hit—though nearly always by a man. It happened he was in a workman’s house when the man was at dinner.
“Canna yer gi’e a man summat better nor this ’ere pap, Missis?” said the hairy husband, turning up his nose at the rice pudding.
“Oh go on,” cried the wife. “I hadna time for owt else.” Dr. Mitchell was just stooping his handsome figure in the doorway.
“Rice pudding!” he exclaimed largely. “You couldn’t have anything more wholesome and nourishing. I have a rice pudding every day of my life—every day of my life, I do.”
The man was eating his pudding and pearling his big moustache copiously with it. He did not answer.
“Do you doctor!” cried the woman. “And never no different.”
“Never,” said the doctor.
“Fancy that! You’re that fond of them?”