"You know, what upsets her most," says he, "is that I can't put a name to ye. For myself, although I came by you promiscuous like at the onset, I likes you and I believes in you. I think you're the right sort, only a bit down in the world. But of course she don't know that. She's not seen you use your ten commandments, young man; and she don't know what pretty little ways your nice little wife 'ave." Cynthia blushed such a brilliant colour at this complimentary reference that the farmer paused to chuckle. "Begs your pardon, I'm sure, my dear," says he, "if I've put my big foot in it. Not his wife. Well, well, I thinks none the worse o' 'im for that, I don't; but if I was you I would not let the mistress know it. Her virtue makes her that disagreeable sometimes as you wouldn't believe. Now if you can give me a name by which I can introjuice you by, fair and square, as though you was friends o' mine, it'll make things easier, do you see, when we sits down to breakfast."
"Well," says I, "since you ask it of us, this lady is the Lady Cynthia Carew, daughter to the Duke of Salop, and you can call me the Earl of Tiverton."
Instead of betraying any surprise at finding us in the possession of dignities which, to say the least, he could not have expected us to enjoy, the farmer betrayed not a whit of it, but broke into a fit of laughter and clapped me upon the shoulder.
"Oh, if it comes to that," says he, "you can call me the Cham of Tartary and my old missis the Queen of Sheba."
Nor would he, in spite of the solemn assurances that I rather delighted to give him, be convinced of our true condition.
"No, my lad," says he, still laughing at the humour of it, "you may be pretty handy with your mauleys, and I would be the last to be denying that, but you're no more the pattern of a nobleman than I am. You should try this game on with a greener chap than me. You must not think because I'm a plain farmer that I can't recognize the real slap-up nobility when I meets them. Now if you allowed yourself to be some sturdy vagabond that's too idle to work for his livelihood, or a strolling actor that is a peddling along the country with his puppet-show, or an incorrigible rogue that's lately out of the stocks for robbing hen-roosts, and was lying last night in my cowhouse to take more than his lodging, I wouldn't disbelieve you. But an earl!—no, you've overshot the mark a bit, my lad. Say a bart now—be satisfied with just a blessed bart—and we'll let it pass at that."
"No, rat me if I will," says I, pretending to be angry. "I'll have my earldom, or I'll have nothing at all."
"But surely a bart's good enough for anybody," says the farmer, fully entering, as he supposed, into the humour of the thing. "Why, I wouldn't mind being a bart mysen. Come, let it go at a bart, my lad. Yes, I'll pass you at a bart out of respect for your fisticuffs, but between you and me I don't think my old mis'ess will."
"No," says I, "'od's blood! I will not be a bart as you call it. I will be the Right Honourable Anthony Gervas John Plowden-Pleydell, Fifth Earl of Tiverton, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, or I will be nothing at all."
"Very well, then," says the farmer perfunctorily, "since that is your humour, we'll have it at that. But wait till I announce your title to my old mis'ess, and hear what she's got to say about it. And this little wench—pretty little wench, I'll allow—she's daughter to my lord the Duke of who?"