‘Well, Samson,’ returned Mrs. Mountain, who knew by long experience when her husband was malleable, ‘you know best, and you’re the master here, as it’s on’y fit and becomin’ an’ in the rightful nature o’ things as you should be.’
The first effect of the oil of flattery seemed to be to harden him.
‘I be, and I mean to be,’ he answered, with added surliness. ‘If the speech and the clothes and the vittles as have been good enough for me ain’t good enough for any young upstart as may follow after me, it is a pity.’
Mary Ann kept silence and looked meek. Samson growled and bullied a little, and wore the airs of a dictator. By and by a serving-maid came in and began to arrange the table for tea, and a little later a boy and a girl stole noiselessly into the room.
‘Joe,’ said Samson sternly, ‘come here!’ The boy approached him with evident dread. ‘What’s this I hear about thee and that young villin of a Reddy?’
‘I don’t know, father,’ the boy answered.
‘I heard him makin’ a boast this afternoon,’ said Samson, rolling bullyingly in his arm-chair, ‘as you and him had fowt last holidays, and as he gi’en you a hiding.’
Joe said nothing, but looked as if he expected the experience to be repeated.
‘Now, what ha’ you got to say to that?’ demanded his father.
‘Why,’ began Joe, edging back a little, ‘he’s bigger nor I be, an’ six months o’der.’