They all concurred in the need for this course, and proceeded to the

antique and lampless back street, in which the red curtain of the Three

Tuns was the only radiant object. As soon as they had stumbled down

into the room Melbury ordered them to be served, when they made

themselves comfortable by the long table, and stretched out their legs

upon the herring-boned sand of the floor. Melbury himself, restless as

usual, walked to the door while he waited for them, and looked up and

down the street.

"I'd gie her a good shaking if she were my maid; pretending to go out

in the garden, and leading folk a twelve-mile traipse that have got to

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get up at five o'clock to morrow," said a bark-ripper; who, not working

regularly for Melbury, could afford to indulge in strong opinions.

"I don't speak so warm as that," said the hollow-turner, "but if 'tis

right for couples to make a country talk about their separating, and

excite the neighbors, and then make fools of 'em like this, why, I

haven't stood upon one leg for five-and-twenty year."

All his listeners knew that when he alluded to his foot-lathe in these

enigmatic terms, the speaker meant to be impressive; and Creedle chimed

in with, "Ah, young women do wax wanton in these days! Why couldn't she

ha' bode with her father, and been faithful?" Poor Creedle was thinking

of his old employer.

"But this deceiving of folks is nothing unusual in matrimony," said

Farmer Bawtree. "I knowed a man and wife--faith, I don't mind owning,

as there's no strangers here, that the pair were my own

relations--they'd be at it that hot one hour that you'd hear the poker

and the tongs and the bellows and the warming-pan flee across the house

with the movements of their vengeance; and the next hour you'd hear 'em

singing 'The Spotted Cow' together as peaceable as two holy twins;

yes--and very good voices they had, and would strike in like

professional ballet-singers to one another's support in the high notes."

"And I knowed a woman, and the husband o' her went away for

four-and-twenty year," said the bark-ripper. "And one night he came home

when she was sitting by the fire, and thereupon he sat down himself on

the other side of the chimney-corner. 'Well,' says she, 'have ye got

any news?' 'Don't know as I have,' says he; 'have you?' 'No,' says

she, 'except that my daughter by my second husband was married last

month, which was a year after I was made a widow by him.' 'Oh!

Anything else?' he says. 'No,' says she. And there they sat, one on

each side of that chimney-corner, and were found by their neighbors

sound asleep in their chairs, not having known what to talk about at

all."




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