“Good morrow, Dan,” says the old lady.
“Good morrow, Mother,” answers Dan.
“What’s the matter with Filomena?”
“A touch of the old complaint, that’s all,” answers Dan drily. “We’d a few words o’ th’ road a-coming—leastwise she had, for she got it pretty much to herself—and for th’ next twelve hours or so she’ll not be able to see anybody under a squire.”
“Is she often like that, Dan?”
“Well, it doesn’t come more days than seven i’ th’ week.”
“Why, you don’t mean to say it’s so every day?” said Agnes, the younger woman of our trio.
Dan shook his head. “Happen there’s an odd un now and then as gets let off,” said he. “But I must after her, or there’ll be more hot water. And it comes to table boilin’, I can tell you. Good morrow!”
Dan runs rather heavily after his incensed spouse, and our friends continue to pick their way down Steephill. For rather more than half the way they go, and when just past the Church of Saint Lawrence, they turn into a narrow street on the left, and in a few yards more they are at home.
Home is one of the smallest houses you ever saw. It has only two rooms, one above the other; but they are a fair size, being about twenty-five feet by sixteen. The upper, of course, is the bedroom; the lower one is kitchen and parlour; and a ladder leads from one to the other. The upper chamber holds a bed, which is like a box out of which the bottom has been taken, filled with straw, and on that is a hard straw mattress, two excessively coarse blankets, and a thick, shaggy, woollen rug for a counterpane. There are not any sheets or pillow-cases; but a thick, hard bolster, stuffed like the mattress with straw, serves for a pillow.