"Donno as I should much."
"If I were to go with you, now, and explain some of them to you? I want you to take your wife and me out for a holiday. You can't think, you who go out to your work every day, how tiresome it is to be in the house from morning to night, especially at this time of the year, when the sun's shining, and the very sparrows trying to sing!"
"She may go out when she please, grannie. I ain't no tyrant."
"But she doesn't care to go without you. You wouldn't have her like one of those slatternly women you see standing at the corners, with their fists in their sides and their elbows sticking out, ready to talk to anybody that comes in the way."
"My wife was never none o' sich, grannie. I knows her as well's e'er a one, though she do 'ave a temper of her own."
At this moment Eliza appeared in the door-way, saying,—
"Will ye come to yer supper, Dick? I ha' got a slice o' ham an' a hot tater for ye. Come along."
"Well, I don't know as I mind—jest to please you, Liza. I believe I ha' been asleep in grannie's cheer there, her a playin' an' a singin', I make no doubt, like a werry nightingerl, bless her, an' me a snorin' all to myself, like a runaway locomotive! Won't you come and have a slice o' the 'am, an' a tater, grannie? The more you ate, the less we'd grudge it."
"I'm sure o' that," chimed in Eliza. "Do now, grannie; please do."
"I will, with pleasure," said Marion; and they went down together.