“Well, I be blessed if I’d go blowin’ up this ’ill as you be a-doin’ then,” said he at last. “No, not to fetch any woman under the sun, if she wouldn’t allow me a swaller first to put the ’eart into my stomach, so to speak! Ye be too easy, mate. Bain’t she well and ’earty and fit to look arter ’erself?”
“Oh, she be well and ’earty enough,” allowed the husband. “I don’t know as I iver see’d a ’eartier gal. But ... well, ye see, Martha don’t think small beer of ’erself, and she _be_ a fine woman, ye’ll allow.”
“Oh, she be a fine woman and no mistake,” allowed the miller, smiling to himself.
“I often wonders what it was made ’er take to the likes o’ me,” went on the other, “for I bain’t no catch. And I allers feels I ought to make it up to ’er, so to speak. But I don’t deny it do come a bit ’ard o’ times.”
“A bit of a Tartar, eh?” asked Moss confidentially.
“I won’t go so far as to say that,” replied the henpecked one as who should refuse to admit a thing that he feared might be true. “She be a just woman, she be, but she bain’t just what ye might call a gentle un’. I’ve sometimes thought as she be too clever.”
“Ah. I don’t know as I care for ’em so clever as all that,” said the miller. “I shouldn’t like a wife cleverer nor myself, now. But there be them as gives up, like, every minute, and that bain’t all fun neither. Why, Lor’ bless me, there be some women want ye to be at their elber to ’elp ’em tell whether the milk be sour or no. It be real contrairy o’ times. Ye be forced to go out-doors to get a minute’s peace.”
“What, talk at ye twenty to the dozen?” asked Hewson feelingly.
“Not so much talk as whine at ye! Make ye believe ye’re a downright brute afore they’ve done. Till ye be forced to go and get a glass o’ beer into ye to see things straight agin.”
“Ah, ye ’aven’t tried whinin’,” retorted Moss. “You wait till you ’ave!”
“I bain’t likely to,” answered the other in a matter-of-fact way. “Martha she bain’t given that way. And I be glad of it, now I hear what you say. I did think—but, there, that’s neither here nor there. I don’t mind sayin’ I’ve altered my mind since I’ve ’eard what you say. I likes ’em gentle, but I likes ’em spry.”
“I don’t believe ye can ’ave it both ways,” he said, with a great air of wisdom. “They ’as their feelin’s when they’s soft-like, and feelin’s is a darned noosance. Ye don’t get no dinner when feelin’s is on the go.”