"What can you be thinking of, Joseph Headish?" says she. "Do you think I would trust two such rapscallion persons out of my sight in our clean upper chambers, and so many things to tempt their honesty in them, too? No; if they want to wash themselves, they must do it at the pump in the yard, as their betters have had to do often enough. And why people like that, leading the vagrant, masterless life they do, should require to wash themselves at all, I don't know. And as you have promised them a bite to eat, they shall have it, after they have washed themselves. But not in my nice clean kitchen. I'll send 'em out half a loaf of bread and a piece of cold bacon, and a mug of my good October ale, and they can take it sitting on the pump, and think themselves lucky to get it too." "Peace, woman," says the farmer, in a voice of such dudgeon as did him the highest credit. "Are you the master in this house, or am I?" To emphasize the inquiry he brought his hand down with such a force upon the breakfast-table as set the dishes rattling; whilst he indicated the answer by peremptorily bidding us follow him upstairs. This we were in something of a hurry to do, and we soon found ourselves in a spacious bed-chamber, which smelt of cleanliness to such an extent that, knowing how very ill our own persons must consort with it, we began to feel that the farmer's wife was justified of her grievances. That worthy shrew, having thoroughly aroused her honest husband, did not think fit to interpose any active resistance to his commands, but contented herself by staying below, and in delivering a shrill monologue from the foot of the stairs. CHAPTER VI CONTAINS A FEW TRITE UTTERANCES ON THE GENTLE PASSION We had to wait a minute for the hot water and fresh towels which our host had had the forethought to order for us. These were presently brought by a strapping servant lass, whose ill-repressed grins proved that she had been a spectator of these incidents. While we waited, the good man's apologies for his wife were truly comic. He chivalrously made it clear to us that her defects sprang from the very excess of excellencies in her character.