I listened to what she had to say quietly, and I said, “Very good; I will call the chambermaid, and she will attend to you.”
She looked at me in a supercilious sort of way, and said, “Humph!” out loud, and growled something to herself, which I know as well as possible, though I didn’t hear it, was that she supposed I was above my business.
Now, that is a thing nobody can say of me with truth; but I never could submit to be sat upon; and nothing puts my back up quicker than for anybody to try it on, especially people who are always giving themselves airs and showing off.
After she’d gone upstairs with the chambermaid and the man who carried the luggage up, to see it put in the proper rooms, I said to my husband, “Harry, there’ll be trouble with that person before we’ve done with her—you mark my words.” Harry said, “Well, my dear, don’t you begin making it,” which made me turn on him rather spitefully. One would have thought, to hear him say that, that I was inclined to quarrel with people and to make words, which I never was, and I hope I never shall be; though, of course, a great deal depends upon the health you are in and the condition of your nerves. You have a baby who is teething, and keeps you awake night after night for a fortnight, and I think Job himself would have lost his patience and turned snappy. And that was what had happened to me with my second—a dear little girl, with the loveliest dark eyes you ever saw in your life, and more like me than Harry, with the prettiest ways a baby ever had, till the teething began, and then the poor mite, I am bound to say, she didn’t show her mother’s amiability of temper. (Ahem! Harry.)
Well, of all the impudent things I ever saw! I left my papers on my desk while I ran downstairs to go to the stores cupboard with cook, and that impudent husband of mine has been reading my manuscript, and has put in that nasty remark. I shan’t scratch it out—it shall stand there as a lasting disgrace to him. It will show young women what they have to expect when they get married, and how little men appreciate a woman who lets them have their own way, and doesn’t make herself a tyrant.
And talking about tyrants, if ever there was one in this world it was that Mr. Owen Wales. That little bit of a fellow, who, as Harry said, was only a pair of red whiskers on two stumps, made his big wife and his big family tremble before him. But I shall come to that presently.
It was as much as I could do to keep from saying, “Oh!” and giggling right out when they all got out of the fly, and the little man walked in like a small turkey-cock surrounded by his giant family. They really looked giants and giantesses by the side of him; but not one of them spoke a word or offered a remark, leaving everything to “Pa.”
Harry said afterwards it reminded him of a little bantam cock when Mr. Owen Wales first strutted in; but there wasn’t much of the bantam when he began to crow—I mean when he began to speak. It was more like a bassoon. He had the deepest and gruffest voice I ever heard. Really, you would wonder how such sounds could come out of a little man’s throat.
He spoke in his gruff voice in a short, jumpy way, as if he was ordering a regiment of soldiers about. “Rooms ready?” “Yes, sir; quite ready.” “Fires alight?” “Yes, sir; they have been alight all day.” He grunted, and then he turned to his family, who all stood meek and mute behind him, and said, “Go on!” Well, he didn’t say it—he growled it, and they all turned and went upstairs after the waitress, like school-children, leaving Mr. Owen Wales to settle with the flyman. Our flyman is a very civil flyman, but Mr. Owen Wales bullied him about some trifle till, the poor man told me afterwards, he felt inclined to jump off the box and give the “little beggar” a good shaking. And that’s how I often felt with him afterwards—that I should like to take him up, put him under my arm, and drop him quietly out of the window, to teach him a lesson.
But his family stood in absolute terror of him, especially his wife, who was the dullest, meekest, quietest creature for her size that you ever saw. She could have taken that little man and given him a good shaking at any moment if she had chosen to put out her strength; and instead of that she obeyed him like a dog and trembled if he spoke cross to her or swore.