Landlady. Wife, indeed!—wife!—wife! wife every minute.
Landlord. Heyday! Why, what a plague would you have me call you? The other day you quarrelled with me for calling you Mrs. Landlady.
Landlady. To be sure I did, and very proper in me I should. I’ve turned off three waiters and five chambermaids already, for screaming after me Mrs. Landlady! Mrs. Landlady! But ’tis all your ill manners.
Landlord. Ill manners! Why, if I may be so bold, if you are not Mrs. Landlady, in the name of wonder what are you?
Landlady. Mrs. Newington, Mr. Newington.
Landlord (drinks). Mrs. Newington, Mr. Newington drinks your health; for I suppose I must not be landlord any more in my own house (shrugs).
Landlady. Oh, as to that, I have no objections nor impediments to your being called Landlord. You look it, and become it very proper.
Landlord. Why, yes, indeed, thank my tankard, I do look it, and become it, and am nowise ashamed of it; but everyone to their mind, as you, wife, don’t fancy the being called Mrs. Landlady.
Landlady. To be sure I don’t. Why, when folks hear the old fashioned cry of Mrs. Landlady! Mrs. Landlady! who do they expect, think you, to see, but an overgrown, fat, featherbed of a woman, coming waddling along with her thumbs sticking on each side of her apron, o’ this fashion? Now, to see me coming, nobody would take me to be a landlady.
Landlord. Very true, indeed, wife—Mrs. Newington, I mean—I ask pardon; but now to go on with what we were saying about the unpossibility of letting that old lady, and the civil-spoken young lady there above, have them there rooms for another day.