“Oh, you won’t have it, won’t you?” said a cross and cracky voice; and Bill saw by the light of a guttering tallow-candle, an old woman going towards a young one who lay on a low iron bed with brass knobs at the corners. “Well, you knows your own business best, and pretty airs you gives yourself. I tell you there ain’t nothing in it, but new-laid egg and good sherry wine, and you see me mix it up yourself. A pretty one you’ll be to go to church to-morrow, wi’out a bit of colour in your cheeks, or a bit of victuals in you. Cry, cry, cry, all the blessed day long, ’stead of being proud to stand up with a rich gentleman! My patience with you are pretty well worn out, and a pretty dance you led me all last night! But I’ve got something in the kitchen as will force you for to swallow, something come a purpose this very day from Lunnon, and directions with it for the fractious folks. Now I try you fair once more, miss, if miss it is; and after that I try you foul, you see if I desn’t.” But the lady, who lay with her face to the wall, and a mass of curly hair shining down her black dress, would not even look round, or make any reply, but just lifted one elbow, and then let it fall again. “Very well! We’ll see. Just you wait ten minutes, while I has a bit to eat myself; and then we’ll try the little tickler. Nobody to thank but yourself, you know. If ever there was a cantankerous, sulky, self-willed young minx, and ungrateful to boot—” The wicked old woman, went muttering from the room, leaving the window still open, and the candle flaring and smoking on the chest of drawers, but locking the narrow door behind her with a rusty squeak of key. “Now or never,” thought Bill, who would have liked, deeply respectful as he was to the fair sex, to have taken that old hag by the throat. With one hand he got a good grasp of the sill, while he passed the other through the wire grating, and raised the sash a little higher, to attract attention. But the fair prisoner was too far gone in distress and despair to heed any light sound, or even a creak and rattle. “Miss, Miss, if you please, young Miss!” Bill put his mouth, which would open as wide as almost any cottage window, as far in as ever it would go (for the wire was much in his way) and blew his voice in. But whether it was from the “wealth of her hair”—as all our best writers express it—or the action of the throat upon the ears (which may have been sobbed into deafness), there she lay like a log, and as if no Bill Tompkins had his heart throbbing only for the benefit of hers. “Rat they women!” thought Bill to himself. “If you want ’em to hear, can’t make ’em do it. If you wants to keep a trifle from ’em, cut both your feet off, and walk upon your fanny-jowls. Here goes, neck or nort!”