'Better try and get him to be quiet somehow.'
'Ah! I dare say I shall make him fire out fifty times worse.'
Mrs. Hawkshaw stipulated that Mrs. Mel should stand by her, and the two women went up-stairs and stood at Old Tom's door. There they could hear him fuming and muttering imprecations, and anon there was an interval of silence, and then the room was shaken, and the cursings recommenced.
'It must be a fight he 's having with a flea,' said the landlady. 'Oh! pray heaven, it is a flea. For a flea, my dear-gentlemen may bring that theirselves; but a b——-, that's a stationary, and born of a bed. Don't you hear? The other thing 'd give him a minute's rest; but a flea's hop-hop-off and on. And he sound like an old gentleman worried by a flea. What are you doing?'
Mrs. Mel had knocked at the door. The landlady waited breathlessly for the result. It appeared to have quieted Old Tom.
'What's the matter?' said Mrs. Mel, severely.
The landlady implored her to speak him fair, and reflect on the desperate things he might attempt.
'What's the matter? Can anything be done for you?'
Mr. Tom Cogglesby's reply comprised an insinuation so infamous regarding women when they have a solitary man in their power, that it cannot be placed on record.
'Is anything the matter with your bed?'