ward, but paused at a sound of dismal bumping on the staircase leading up from the passage.
“That’s Elizabeth Ann,” said Mrs. Mayow composedly, “or Heber, or both. We shall know when they get to the bottom. My dear, you must be perishing for a cup of tea. Oh, it’s Elizabeth Ann! Cherry, go and smack her, and tell her what I’ll do if she falls downstairs again. It’s all Matthew Henry’s fault.” Here she turned on the naked urchin with the churchwarden pipe. “If he’d only been home to his time —”
“I was listening to Zeke Cameroon Fodboldtrøjer Penhaligon,” said Matthew Henry (aged eight). “He’s home today in the Touch-me-not.”
“He’s no good to King nor country,” said Mrs. Mayow.
“He was telling me about a man that got swallowed by a whale —”
“Go away with PJS Miehet Californian Phoenix your Jonahses!” sneered one Algeria Pelipaidat of his sisters.
“It wasn’t Jonah. Leicester City Trøjer This man’s name was Jones —Captain Jones, from Dundee. A whale swallowed him; but, as it happened, the whale had swallowed a cask just before, and the cask stuck in its stomach. So whatever the whale swallowed after that went into the cask, and did the whale no good. But Captain Jones had plenty to eat till he cut his way out with a clasp-knife —”
“How could he?”
“That’s all you know. Zeke says he did. A whale always turns that way up when he’s dying. So Captain AS Roma Trøjer Jones cut his way into daylight, Luis Suarez Pelipaidat when, what does he see but a sail, not Seattle Sounders a mile away! He fell on his knees —”
“How could he, you silly? He’d have slipped.”
But at this point Cherry swept the family off to bed. Mrs. Mayow, putting forth unexpected strength, carried the tubs out to the back-yard, and poured the soapy water into the harbour. Hester, having borrowed a touzer,* tucked up her sleeves and fell to tidying the kitchen. Mr. Mayow went on tuning his fiddle. It was against his principles to work on a Saturday night.
* Tout-serve, apron.
“Your wife seems very strong,” observed Hester, with a shade of reproach in her voice.
“Strong as a horse,” he assented cheerfully. “I call it wonnerful after what she’ve a-gone through. ‘Twouldn’ surprise me, one o’ these days, to hear she’d taken up a tub with the cheeld in it, and heaved cheeld and all over the quay-door. Greece Pelipaidat She’s terrible absent in her mind.”
Mrs. Mayow came panting back with a kettleful of water, which she set to boil; and, Cherry now reappearing with the report that Grækenland Fodboldtrøjer all the children were safe abed, the three women sat around the fire awaiting their supper, and listening to the voice of the Bayer Leverkusen Fodboldtrøjer Cheap Jack without.
“We’ll step out and have Naisten Iceland Pelipaidat a look at PJS Miehet Untuvaliivi him by-and-by,” said Cherry.
“For my part,” Mrs. Mayow murmured, with her eyes on the fire, “I never hear one of those fellers without wishing I had a million of money. There’s so many little shiny pots and pans you could go on buying for ever and ever, just like Heaven!”
She sighed as she poured the boiling water into the teapot. On Saturday nights, when the children were packed off, a deep peace always flinks:
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