At length Mrs. Sandboys, who two or three times had just saved herself from falling almost flat on her nose while dozing in the dilapidated chair, began to be fairly tired out; and Cursty, who had sat on the top of the beer-barrel till his legs were nearly cut through with the sharp edge of the hoop, found that it was impossible to continue his slumbers in so inconvenient a posture, so he took his fat and dozing little wife in his arms, and standing once more on the trestle, fairly lifted her into the hammock; after which, seizing the chain that hung from the iron plate in the pavement above, he with one desperate bound swung himself by her side into the hammock.
In a few minutes they were both fast locked in slumber; but Cursty’s repose was destined to be of short duration; for soon Mrs. Sandboys, shaking him violently, roused him from his rest.
“Up wi’thee!—up wi’thee! thar be summet beastes a-crawling ower my face, Cursty. Ah, these Lon’on beds! We’ll be beath yeeten up, aleyve, if thee staps here, Cursty!”
And so saying, she gave her lord and master so stout a thrust in his back, that drove his weight to the edge of the hammock, and again brought him rapidly to the floor.
Mrs. Sandboys in her fright soon followed her husband; and then nothing would satisfy her but she must have the whole of the bedding and clothes turned out on the ground, and minutely examined by the light of the rushlight.
But Mr. Sandboys, already deprived of the half of his night’s rest, was in no way fit for the performance desired by his wife; and, in order to satisfy her qualms, he proposed that the mattrass alone should be replaced in the hammock, and then she need have no fear.
Mrs. Sandboys was herself in no humour to hold out against so apparently rational a proposal; and, having consented to the compromise, there began the same series of arduous and almost perilous struggles to ensconce their two selves once more in the interior of the hammock.
After several heavy tumbles on both sides, and breaking the rusty iron chain which served to hold down the circular trap in the pavement above, the worthy couple did ultimately manage to succeed again in their courageous undertaking; and then, fairly exhausted with their labours, they closed their eyes just as the blue light of day was showing through the cracks of the coal-cellar door.
The Cumberland couple had continued their rest undisturbed some few hours, when Mrs. Sandboys was aroused by hearing the circular iron trap moved above her head. She woke her husband with a violent shake, telling him, as soon as she could make him understand, that she was sure some of her friends, the London thieves, were preparing to make a descent through the pavement into their subterranean bed-chamber.
Mr. Sandboys was no sooner got to comprehend the cause of her alarm, than he saw the end of the chain lifted up, and the trap removed from the pavement above them.