"But how do the folks here contrive to pig it away together six in a bed?" inquired Mr Vernon Wycherley. "Your beds must be very large, otherwise I should fancy such close stowage to be hardly possible."
"O na, sir, you don't onderstand," replied the maid, hardly able to restrain herself from laughing outright at the stranger's gross ignorance of mining habits; "not pair[39] o' six all to bed together to one time; you da see miners do work to bal[40] eight hours to a spell, and has sexteen to stay 'bove ground; so one and his comarade sleeps their first eight hours 'bove ground, and then turns out for the next pair; and so they goes on, one pair in and t'other pair out, so that between sex on 'um, the bed's never to say quite empty."
"And can never, of course, require a warming-pan," remarked Frank.
"Lar! tha b'est a queer little chap," thought Mary; but being too polite to say as much, she merely smiled pleasantly at the remark, as she tripped out of the room.
"Well, as we must toddle further, it's of little use to put so grave a face upon it, old fellow," observed Frank to his poetical friend, who was indulging in a reverie, with his eyes fixed in vacancy towards the burning embers in the grate.
"Eh! what?" demanded Vernon, with the usual start of an absent literary man, whose attention is suddenly awakened. Frank repeated his previous remark.
"My thoughts were far, far away from hence," said Mr Vernon Wycherley; "the subject of them was my comedy, which, as you know, I intend to offer for the prize at the Haymarket."
"Your comedy be hanged!" interrupted Frank.
"I fear that even a direr fate than that awaits it," resumed its author. "Oh! if I had but seen her before I arranged my female characters—have carried her beauteous image in my mind, as now I mentally behold her"—
"What! Molly Potts?" interposed Mr Frank Trevelyan, with a look of arch innocence—such a funny look it was, as no man living but Frank himself could possibly have given.