"Après? We travellers cannot strip and go bare while you wash our clothes," objected a peevish old fellow by the fireside, who had kept mumchance during the raillery, but crept out into the sunshine of commonplaces. "I aimed not your way, ancient man," replied Marion superciliously. "But, _since you ask me_" (here she scanned him slowly from head to foot), "I trow you might take a turn in the tub, clothes and all, and no harm done" (laughter). "But what I spoke for, I thought--this young sire--might like his beard starched." Poor Gerard's turn had come: his chin crop was thin and silky. The loudest of all the laughters this time was the traitor Denys, whose beard was of a good length, and singularly stiff and bristly: so that Shakespeare, though he never saw him, hit him in the bull's eye. "Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard." _As You Like It._ Gerard bore the Amazonian satire mighty calmly. He had little personal vanity. "Nay, 'chambrière'" said he with a smile, "mine is all unworthy your pains: take you this fair growth in hand!" and he pointed to Denys's vegetable. "Oh, time for that, when I starch the besoms." Whilst they were all shouting over this palpable hit, the mistress returned, and, in no more time than it took her to cross the threshold, did our Amazon turn to a seeming Madonna meek and mild. Mistresses are wonderful subjugators. Their like I think breathes not on the globe. Housemaids, decide! It was a waste of histrionic ability though; for the landlady had heard, and did not at heart disapprove, the peals of laughter. "Ah, Marion, lass," said she, good-humouredly, "If you laid me an egg every time you cackle, 'Les Trois Poissons' would never lack an omelet." "Now, dame," said Gerard, "what is to pay?" "What for?" "Our supper." "Where is the hurry? cannot you be content to pay when you go? lose the guest, find the money, is the rule of 'The Three Fish.'" "But, dame, outside 'The Three Fish' it is thus written--'Ici--on ne loge--'" "Bah! Let that flea stick on the wall! Look hither," and she pointed to the smoky ceiling, which was covered with hieroglyphics. These were accounts, vulgo scores; intelligible to this dame and her daughter, who wrote them at need by simply mounting a low stool, and scratching with a knife so as to show lines of ceiling through the deposit of smoke. The dame explained that the writing on the wall was put there to frighten moneyless folk from the inn altogether, or to be acted on at odd times when a nonpaying face should come in and insist on being served. "We can't refuse them plump, you know. The law forbids us." "And how know you mine is not such a face?" "Out, fie! it is the best face that has entered 'The Three Fish' this autumn." "And mine, dame?" said Denys; "dost see no knavery here?"