I never felt more taken aback in my life; but I spoke out boldly, and said that it was I.
“And sarve him right. Be a lesson to him. Mixing himself up wi’ such business. I towd him if he crep into people’s places o’ neets, when he owt to hev been fast asleep i’ bed wi’ his wife and bairns, he must reckon on being ketched like a rat. I’d like to knock some o’ their heads together, I would. They’re allus feitin’ agen the mesters, and generally for nowt, and it’s ooz as has to suffer.”
Mrs Gentles had told me to try and sleep, and she meant well; but there were two things which, had I been so disposed, would thoroughly have prevented it, and they were the dread of Gentles doing something to be revenged upon me, and his wife’s tongue.
For she went on chattering away to me in the most confidential manner, busying herself all the time in brushing my dusty jacket on a very white three-legged table, after giving the cloth a preliminary beating outside.
“There,” she said, hanging it on a chair; “by and by you shall get up and brush your hair, and I’ll give you a brush down, and then with clean boots you will not be so very much the worse.”
She then sat down to some needlework, stitching away busily, and giving me all sorts of information about her family—how she had two boys out at work at Bandy’s, taking it for granted that I knew who Bandy’s were; that she had her eldest girl in service, and the next helping her aunt Betsey, and the other four were at school.
All of which was, no doubt, very interesting to her; but the only part that took my attention was about her two boys, who had, I knew, from what I overheard, been in the pack that had so cruelly hunted me down.
And all this while I could hear the slow brush, brush at my boots, evidently outside the back-door, and I half expected to have them brought back ripped, or with something sharp inside to injure me when I put them on.
At last, after Mrs Gentles had made several allusions to how long “the mester” was “wi’ they boots,” he came in, limping slightly, and after closing the door dropped them on the brick floor.
“Why, Sam!” exclaimed Mrs Gentles, “I’d be ashamed o’ mysen—that I would!”