"Will you stop that there knocking, then?" roared Peckaby, "Disturbing a man's night's rest."
"I will come in then, Peckaby," she stormed, plucking up a little spirit in her desperation. "I be your wife, you know I be, and I will come in."
"My good woman, what's took you?" cried Peckaby, in a tone of compassionating suavity. "You ain't no wife of mine. My wife's miles on her road by this time. She's off to New Jerusalem on a white donkey."
A new actor came up to the scene—no other than Jan Verner. Jan had been sitting up with some poor patient, and was now going home. To describe his surprise when he saw the windows alive with nightcapped heads, and Mrs. Peckaby in her dripping discomfort, in her paint, in her state altogether, outward and inward, would be a long task. Peckaby himself undertook the explanation, in which he was aided by Chuff; and Jan sat himself down on the public pump, and laughed till he was hoarse.
"Come, Peckaby, you'll let her in," cried he, before he went away.
"Let her in!" echoed Peckaby, "That would be a go, that would! What 'ud the saints say? They'd be for prosecuting of her for bigamy. If she's gone over to them, sir, she can't belong legal to me."
Jan laughed so that he had to hold his sides, and Mrs. Peckaby shrieked and sobbed. Chuff began calling out that the best remedy for white paint was turpentine.
"Coma along, Peckaby, and open the door," said Jan, rising. "She'll catch an illness if she stops here in her wet clothes, and I shall have a month's work, attending on her. Come!"
"Well, sir, to oblige you, I will," returned the man. "But let me ever catch her snivelling after them saints again, that's all! They should have her if they liked; I'd not."
"You hear, Mrs. Peckaby," said Jan in her ear. "I'd let the saints alone for the future, if I were you."