In sooth I was. I dare say it is that I am always keenly alive to these odd passages in life, and that I am more prone to seize the whimsicality of a matter than is a person of a better gravity. I vow it was finer than a play to me to witness a highly rustical farmer and his spouse violently quarrelling because Mr. Chawbacon had degraded his rural abode by bringing a duke's daughter into it. And here was the storm growing shriller, the farmer redder and angrier, and poor little Cynthia ready to faint with the humiliation of it all.
The state of the case was not improved when the farmer turned his back on his wife in the middle of her invective. And doubtless to define his opinion of her behaviour and to show that he was determined to stand by us, come what might, he very civilly asked us whether we would care to have some hot water from the kettle and go upstairs and perform our ablutions. You may guess with what alacrity we accepted this invitation; indeed nothing could have better accorded with our needs and our wishes. But no sooner had the farmer spoken to this tenor than Mistress Headish broke out shriller than before:
"What can you be thinking of, Joseph Headish?" says she. "Do you think I would trust two such rapscallion persons out of my sight in our clean upper chambers, and so many things to tempt their honesty in them, too? No; if they want to wash themselves, they must do it at the pump in the yard, as their betters have had to do often enough. And why people like that, leading the vagrant, masterless life they do, should require to wash themselves at all, I don't know. And as you have promised them a bite to eat, they shall have it, after they have washed themselves. But not in my nice clean kitchen. I'll send 'em out half a loaf of bread and a piece of cold bacon, and a mug of my good October ale, and they can take it sitting on the pump, and think themselves lucky to get it too."
"Peace, woman," says the farmer, in a voice of such dudgeon as did him the highest credit. "Are you the master in this house, or am I?"
To emphasize the inquiry he brought his hand down with such a force upon the breakfast-table as set the dishes rattling; whilst he indicated the answer by peremptorily bidding us follow him upstairs. This we were in something of a hurry to do, and we soon found ourselves in a spacious bed-chamber, which smelt of cleanliness to such an extent that, knowing how very ill our own persons must consort with it, we began to feel that the farmer's wife was justified of her grievances. That worthy shrew, having thoroughly aroused her honest husband, did not think fit to interpose any active resistance to his commands, but contented herself by staying below, and in delivering a shrill monologue from the foot of the stairs.
CHAPTER VI
CONTAINS A FEW TRITE UTTERANCES ON THE GENTLE PASSION
We had to wait a minute for the hot water and fresh towels which our host had had the forethought to order for us. These were presently brought by a strapping servant lass, whose ill-repressed grins proved that she had been a spectator of these incidents. While we waited, the good man's apologies for his wife were truly comic. He chivalrously made it clear to us that her defects sprang from the very excess of excellencies in her character.
"A notable good woman," says he, while her voice continued to shrill up the stairs. "A fine, honest, energetic woman—a woman in a thousand. Always strivin', savin', and cleanin' she is, the very model of what a housewife should be. If she's got a fault, it is her over-anxiousness. She will look on the dark side of things; and she's that dreadful suspicious, all in the interest of her household, that if a stranger is seen with his head over the fence, she can't sleep for a week after it, being so certain in her mind that the hayricks are going to be fired, the stock taken, the farmstead broken into, and our throats cut as we lie in bed. But I know you'll overlook it; she don't mean nothing by it, as you can see with half an eye. She's a rare good woman as ivver I see; it's only her worritin' frettishness for the welfare o' the farm; you do understand that, don't you?"
"Perfectly," we said together, an assurance that relieved the good man mightily.