“I’m nobbut thinkin’ yo’ll change yo’r tune afore long, same as the rest on us,” returned the other. “We all has to give in to Miss Whiteside. Jem Phillips, as has just gone, he thought he’d have his own way about comin’ home late fro’ the public, but she soon let him know.”
“I’ll let her know then,” growled Luke, in the depths of his brown beard.
That very evening his resolution was put to the test. He had preserved an ominous and gloomy silence throughout supper, which, though plentiful and comfortably served, was rendered in a manner distasteful to him by the compulsory devotions which had preceded it; and observed in a loud voice at its conclusion, that he intended to step out to the “Blue Lion.” Jinny received the information disapprovingly but calmly.
“I’m not responsible for what yo’ do outside o’ this house; yo’ can be as great a fool as yo’ like,” she said. “As long as yo’ coom back sober, an’ not too late,” she added with emphasis. “Ten’s my hour for going to bed; I don’t say but what I met stretch a point now an’ then, an’ stop up till half-past ten, but folks as comes home later nor that ’ull find theirsel’s locked out.”
“Eleven’s closin’ time,” said Luke, sulkily. “I suppose yo’ think yo’rsel’ better able to make laws nor the government.”
“I makes laws for my own house,” responded Miss Whiteside with dignity. “I always kept my ’ouse respectable, an’ I’ll go on doin’ of it. No house can be respectable as takes a lodger out o’ they crowd o’ shoutin’, singin’ wastrels as nobbut cooms whoam when they’re turned out o’ the public. If one o’ my lodgers is sich a noddy as to go to the public at all he mun walk out o’ his own free will, an’ not wait to be turned out.”
“Of his own free will, indeed!” commented Luke, with an angry laugh; “theer’s not mich free will left to ony chap as bides i’ this cote.”
“Please yo’rself an’ yo’ please me,” said Jinny. “I don’t want to keep nobry here against their will, but if yo’ reckon to lodge here yo’ must do same as I tell yo’.”
“I’ve more nor half a mind to tak’ yon wench at her word,” muttered Kershaw, as he strode away, accompanied by John, whom he had persuaded to join him for a single glass, though, as the latter explained, in a general way he was temperance.
“Yo’ll do same as the rest on us—yo’ll give in. Eh, mon, yo’ll not rue it I tell yo’; I’ve been a dale ’appier an ’a dale better sin’ Miss Whiteside took me in hand. An’ Mary Frith, as I’m keepin’ coompany with, says often an’ often she blesses the day I went to lodge wi’ her.”