“That’s none of your business,” said Joan, “and unless you want to see me at the washingtub you had better hurry. What you want with all that sleep, and all that meat, is more than I can tell. I’ll do a better day’s work than the best of you upon half of it. Get up to your washing, ye lazy hussies.” Joan clapped the door with a little noise behind her, so as to obliterate this word, which her grandmother would have used with the greatest openness, but which the progress of civilisation has made less possible even in the free-speaking north; but it relieved her mind to say it, though she took pains that it should not be heard. As for the two women, they laughed with little sound, but much demonstration, when the door was closed; one of them throwing herself upon a chair in convulsions of suppressed mirth. “Auld Joan, t’auld toad, has gotten a lad at last,” they said. The idea that she had been shut out in the cold in this very unusual courtship was such a joke to them as no wit could have equalled. “T’auld Joan!” who was always so much wiser than everybody else, and repressed “lads” with the strong hand. But notwithstanding the excellency of the joke, they made haste to their washing, as Joan was not a person to be trifled with, and soon the scene of her disturbed slumber was full of noise, and bustle, and steam, and all the commotion of a big washing, which always carries with it some features of a Saturnalia. As the big pairs of red arms played in and out of the steam and froth, a continued tempest of talk accompanied the operations; but there were lulls now and then, especially when any new-comer appeared, when the event of the night was communicated in loud whispers, with peals of accompanying laughter. “T’auld Joan’s gotten a lad at last.” “What’s the joke?” she said, on one occasion, coming in abruptly; but this merely threw the company, which was in full enjoyment of the witticism, into wilder convulsions of laughter. Perhaps Joan guessed what it was. “You can have your fun for me, as long as you do your work,” she said. She was not troubled by uneasy suggestions of _amour-propre_. The maid who did the indoor work did not get off so easily. She made a kind of confession. “I heard t’ master aboot. I durstn’t get oop, and him there; and, Miss Joan, I dunno if you ken--Master Harry’s been oot aw night. His bed’s just as t’was.”