“What fault of mine, or of his, poor lamb?” Mrs. Tugwell asked, with some irony. She knew that her husband could never dare to go to see the King without her--for no married man in the place would venture to look at him twice if he did such a thing--and she had made up her own mind to go from the first; but still, he should humble himself before she did it. “Was it I as colted him? Or was it him as gashed himself, like the prophets of Baal, when 'a was gone hunting?” “No; but you cockered him up, the same as was done to they, by the wicked king, and his wife--the worst woman as ever lived. If they hadn't gashed theirselves, I reckon, the true man of God would 'a done it for them, the same as he cut their throats into the brook Kishon. Solomon was the wisest man as ever lived, and Job the most patient--the same as I be--and Elijah, the Tishbite, the most justest.” “You better finish up with all the Psalms of David, and the Holy Children, and the Burial Service. No more call for Parson Twemlow, or the new Churchwarden come in place of Cheeseman, because 'a tried to hang his self. Zebedee Tugwell in the pulpit! Zebedee, come round with the plate! Parson Tugwell, if you please, a-reading out the ten commandments! But 'un ought to leave out the sixth, for fear of spoiling 's own dinner afterwards; and the seventh, if 'a hopes to go to see King George the third, with another man's woman to his elbow!” “When you begins to go on like that,” Captain Tugwell replied, with some dignity, “the only thing as a quiet man can do is to go out of houze, and have a half-pint of small ale.” He put his hat on his head and went to do it. Notwithstanding all this and much more, when the great day came for the Grand Review, very few people saw more of the King, or entered more kindly into all his thoughts--or rather the thoughts that they made him think--than Zebedee Tugwell and his wife Kezia. The place being so near home, and the smoke of their own chimneys and masts of their smack as good as in sight--if you knew where to look--it was natural for them to regard the King as a stranger requiring to be taught about their place. This sense of proprietary right is strong in dogs and birds and cows and rabbits, and everything that acts by nature's laws. When a dog sits in front of his kennel, fast chained, every stranger dog that comes in at the gate confesses that the premises are his, and all the treasures they contain; and if he hunts about--which he is like enough to do, unless full of self-respect and fresh victuals--for any bones invested in the earth to ripen, by the vested owner, he does it with a low tail and many pricks of conscience, perhaps hoping in his heart that he may discover nothing to tempt him into breach of self-respect. But now men are ordered, in this matter, to be of lower principle than their dogs.