So you see, whether we are birds or worms, we cannot count our chances of success or safety by our early rising. A certain worm may rise too early for the particular bird which is waiting for him, or he may lie abed just long enough to be snapped up by a late and luxurious cormorant; so, though the early bird may pick up the early worm, yet the lazy bird may also encounter the worm that is late.
The meaning of this is that proverbs are not necessarily the most truthful and useful things in the world, though Mrs. Dibble discovered some truth in the axiom, that “it can’t rain but it pours.”
A series of short, sharp screams were the earliest indications of something wrong in the Dibbleonian household on this morning of the “gude man’s” departure.
Mrs. Dibble got up, as we have intimated, rather earlier than usual, for the purpose of preparing breakfast with her own hands, scorning to trust certain little delicacies of bacon and kidneys to her diminutive servant.
The sight of her extempore bed undisturbed and with no Thomas in it gave her a dreadful turn, as she explained afterwards, and that writing on the table with his confession in it might have knocked her down with a feather. So she screamed aloud, and as soon as she heard footsteps on the stairs she composed her morning gown into becoming folds, and posed herself for a comfortable faint upon the previously unpressed bed.
Mr. Somerton was the first to put in an appearance, then came Paul, and in a few minutes his sister Amy, all more or less frightened by Mrs. Dibble’s screams. Mr. Somerton took the paper from her hands, read aloud the big open letters, and expressed his satisfaction in unmistakable language.
Amy threw her arms round Paul’s neck, and at the same moment her father threw a jug of cold water into Mrs. Dibble’s face, which roused that lady up in a fit of passion and indignation.
“Mithter Thomerton, thir, I wonder you are not ashamed of yourself, to treat a lady in that outdacious way, throwing a bucket of water over her as if she were a doorstep or some other inanimate thing, or one of your own cattle; but it’s the way of the world,—oh, yes, nothing but ingratitude and all that’s bad!”
Mrs. Dibble shook her dress, and wiped her face with a towel, and shook her head, and stormed and stamped her feet, and gave other indications of perfect convalescence, and finally sank down again exhausted; but she sprang to her feet in an attitude of defence when Mr. Somerton seized the water-jug for the second time.
By-and-by the position of affairs was gravely discussed, and Mrs. Dibble talked of a hundred schemes of restoring Thomas to his home. She would send the police after him; she would advertise for him in the Times; she would follow him on foot through the wide wide world. Then in a moment of indignation she insisted upon his never returning to the roof which he had dishonoured, and the harmonies of which would never go up to heaven any more on Sunday evenings as tokens of peace and honour. The old termagant grew quite eloquent in her distress and passion, and all the time expressed her conviction that Paul was innocent as the lamb led to the slaughter.