They all concurred in the need for this course, and proceeded to the
antique and lampless back street, in which the red curtain of the Three
Tuns was the only radiant object. As soon as they had stumbled down
into the room Melbury ordered them to be served, when they made
themselves comfortable by the long table, and stretched out their legs
upon the herring-boned sand of the floor. Melbury himself, restless as
usual, walked to the door while he waited for them, and looked up and
down the street.
"I'd gie her a good shaking if she were my maid; pretending to go out
in the garden, and leading folk a twelve-mile traipse that have got to
get up at five o'clock to morrow," said a bark-ripper; who, not working
regularly for Melbury, could afford to indulge in strong opinions.
"I don't speak so warm as that," said the hollow-turner, "but if 'tis
right for couples to make a country talk about their separating, and
excite the neighbors, and then make fools of 'em like this, why, I
haven't stood upon one leg for five-and-twenty year."
All his listeners knew that when he alluded to his foot-lathe in these
enigmatic terms, the speaker meant to be impressive; and Creedle chimed
in with, "Ah, young women do wax wanton in these days! Why couldn't she
ha' bode with her father, and been faithful?" Poor Creedle was thinking
of his old employer.
"But this deceiving of folks is nothing unusual in matrimony," said
Farmer Bawtree. "I knowed a man and wife--faith, I don't mind owning,
as there's no strangers here, that the pair were my own
relations--they'd be at it that hot one hour that you'd hear the poker
and the tongs and the bellows and the warming-pan flee across the house
with the movements of their vengeance; and the next hour you'd hear 'em
singing 'The Spotted Cow' together as peaceable as two holy twins;
yes--and very good voices they had, and would strike in like
professional ballet-singers to one another's support in the high notes."
"And I knowed a woman, and the husband o' her went away for
four-and-twenty year," said the bark-ripper. "And one night he came home
when she was sitting by the fire, and thereupon he sat down himself on
the other side of the chimney-corner. 'Well,' says she, 'have ye got
any news?' 'Don't know as I have,' says he; 'have you?' 'No,' says
she, 'except that my daughter by my second husband was married last
month, which was a year after I was made a widow by him.' 'Oh!
Anything else?' he says. 'No,' says she. And there they sat, one on
each side of that chimney-corner, and were found by their neighbors
sound asleep in their chairs, not having known what to talk about at
all."