A large handsome bed was in the room with the curtains drawn, and Jacob Gray advancing cautiously, peered in between them, when to his horror and consternation, he found the bed occupied.
An elderly female, with a red termagant face, who by the mountain she made of the bed clothes, must have been of most ample proportions, lay sleeping in the bed.
The slight noise he made, appeared to have disturbed the lady, for a long-drawn snore proclaimed that her easy slumbers were about being disturbed.
Gray heard two or three hard blows given to the bed, and then the lady muttered,—
“Take that, you wretch—you’ll disturb me, will you, again,” and then evidently fancying she had silenced her supposed bed-fellow, the corpulent lady, with a singular imitation of a bassoon by means of her olfactory organ, she again resigned herself to sleep.
The same man’s name that Gray had heard already, now said at the door,—
“You’re asleep yet, are you! Oh, you are a beauty—well, there is some peace in the house early in the morning, for all who like to get up, and enjoy—because you are too lazy to be among us so early, if ever a man was cursed—ah, well, it’s no use complaining.”
“Oh, you disagreeable beast!” shrieked the lady, who had only been in what is termed a dog-sleep, and had heard the remarks of the man at the door.
“You wretch—you varmint. So that’s the way you goes on, is it? You ugly lump of wretchedness?”
“What do you say, my dear?” remarked the man in so altered and humble a voice that Jacob Gray could scarcely believe it came from the same individual.