“But, then, it ain’t,” said Sim, smiling. “You see, I knew where to pick up a good missus.”
“Yes,” retorted his wife, “and then tried to pine her to dead for all you’d do to feed her. Will ta have a few broth?”
“Yes,” said Sim, taking the basin she offered him and sniffing at it. “Say, wife, you’ve been waring your money at a pretty rate.”
“I’ve wared no money ower that,” said Mrs Slee. “Thou mayst thank parson for it.”
“Yah!” growled Sim, dipping his spoon, and beginning angrily; “this mutton’s as tough as a bont whong.”
“There, do sup thee broth like a Christian, if thee canst!” exclaimed Mrs Slee. “Wilt ta have a tate?”
Sim held out his basin for the “tate” his wife was denuding of its jacket, and she dropped it into the broth.
“Say!” exclaimed Sim, poking at the potato with his spoon, “these taters are strange and sad.”
Mrs Slee did not make any reply, but went on peeling potatoes one by one, evidently in search of a floury one to suit her husband, who objected to those of a waxy or “sad” nature. But they were all alike, and he had to be content.
“I’ll have a few more broth,” said Sim, at the end of a short space of time, and before his wife had had an opportunity to partake of a mouthful; and this being ladled out for him and finished, Sim condescended to say “that them broth wasn’t bad.”