"Is he really a hell-hound, Joe, when he's got a sup of beer in him? I've no clear notion what a hell-hound is, but clearly it means something as bad, say, as a janissary--the worst animal I ever came across."
"Sup o' beer in 'im," snorted Joe contemptuously. "He dunna really know what beer is, my lady. It's a grand thing is beer, if y'll only tak' enough of it to do y' good, but there's no vartue in half a pint of it. I've told 'im that lots of times. But it's God's truth, my lady, 'e dunna want no beer, dunna Master Noll, to mak 'im 'it like the kick of a 'oss. I on'y brought 'im a few daceys up t'ouse this mawnin', an'--"
"You row harder, Joe, and yawp less," said I, interrupting him. "Between you and Jane I shan't have a rag of character left."
"Sup o' beer in him," he growled, and spat loudly on his hands. Joe looked at all men as potential customers of the "Bull and Mouth," and judged them accordingly.
"I know the worst about you now, Master Wheatman, and by way of providing you with a less embarrassing topic of conversation, you might tell me what we shall do when we get to Stafford."
"We are going to Marry-me-quick's."
She started so abruptly that I laughed outright, and Joe rumbled like an overloaded wagon. I explained.
"We shall approach the town on the south side where the wall comes down to the river. 'Marry-me-quick' is not, as you seem to suppose, a disagreeable process, but an agreeable old woman who lives in a cottage which backs on to the river. Every schoolboy in the town knows her by that name, which is also the name of a kind of toffee she makes, and by the sale of which she earns a modest living. I cannot tell you how the name originated, but there it is. I went to the grammar school in the town, and in my time I must have bought and consumed some hundredweights of her 'marry-me-quick.' In her tiny cottage you may rest in safety while I hunt up Jack Dobson and learn what has been done with your father."
"An' if I'd got a shilling," said the irrepressible Joe, "for every pat of butter I've taken owd Marry-me-quick, I'd--I'd--"
He seemed lost for words, so I assisted him, and paid him back at the same time, by saying, "Pluck up courage enough to speak to Jane." "That's rate, Master Noll."