'Say!' said that lady, undauntedly, but in a tone of reason rather than rebuke, 'I say you may just as well fling your money in the gutter as to go off to Epping at three o'clock in the afternoon. Why didn't you start in the morning? If I hired a pleasure-van I'd have my money's worth out of it.' 'It's just this here,' said Sam. 'It was ordered to be here as St. Paul's great bell was a striking break o' day, but the wheels wasn't greased; and they have been all this time a greasing 'em with the best fresh butter at eighteen-pence a pound, had up from Devonshire on purpose.' 'You hold your tongue, Sam,' reprimanded Mrs. Quale. 'You have been a greasing your throat pretty strong, I see, with an extra pot or two; you'll be in for it as usual before the day's out. How is it you are going now?' she added, turning to the women. 'It's just the worst managed thing as I ever had to do with,' volubly spoke up Jim Dunn's wife, Hannah. 'And it's all the fault o' the men: as everything as goes wrong always is. There was a quarrel yesterday over it, and nothing was settled, and this morning when we met they began a jawing again. Some would go, and some wouldn't; some 'ud have a van to the Forest, and some 'ud take a omnibus ride to the Zoological Gardens, and see the beasts, and finish up at the play; some 'ud sit at home, and smoke, and drink, and wouldn't go nowhere; and most of the men got off to the "Bricklayers' Arms" and stuck there; and afore the difference was settled in favour of the van and the Forest, twelve o'clock struck, and then there was dinner to be had, and us to put ourselves to rights and the van to be seen after. And there it is, now three o'clock's gone.' 'It'll be just a ride out, and a ride in,' cried Mrs. Quale; 'you won't have much time to stop. Money must be plentiful with you, a fooling it away like that. I thought some of you had better sense.' 'We spoke against it, father and I,' said quiet Mary Baxendale, in Mrs. Quale's ear; 'but as we had given our word to join in it and share in the expense, we didn't like to go from it again. Mother doesn't feel strong to-day, so she's stopping at home.' 'It does seem stupid to start at this late hour,' spoke up a comely woman, mild in speech, Robert Darby's wife. 'Better to have put it off till to-morrow, and taken another day's holiday, as I told my master. But when it was decided to go, we didn't say nay, for I couldn't bear to disappoint the children.'