However, at last I persuaded them that I had no intention of giving up the ghost that night; and then they all fell to, and thanked God with an emphasis quite unknown in church.  And hereupon Master Stickles said, in his free and easy manner (for no one courted his observation), that I was the luckiest of all mortals in having a mother, and a sister, and a sweetheart, to make much of me.  For his part, he said, he was just as well off in not having any to care for him.  For now he might go and get shot, or stabbed, or knocked on the head, at his pleasure, without any one being offended.  I made bold, upon this, to ask him what was become of his wife; for I had heard him speak of having one.  He said that he neither knew nor cared; and perhaps I should be like him some day.  That Lorna should hear such sentiments was very grievous to me.  But she looked at me with a smile, which proved her contempt for all such ideas; and lest anything still more unfit might be said, I dismissed the question.

But Master Stickles told me afterwards, when there was no one with us, to have no faith in any woman, whatever she might seem to be.  For he assured me that now he possessed very large experience, for so small a matter; being thoroughly acquainted with women of every class, from ladies of the highest blood, to Bonarobas, and peasants’ wives:  and that they all might be divided into three heads and no more; that is to say as follows.  First, the very hot and passionate, who were only contemptible; second, the cold and indifferent, who were simply odious; and third, the mixture of the other two, who had the bad qualities of both.  As for reason, none of them had it; it was like a sealed book to them, which if they ever tried to open, they began at the back of the cover.

Now I did not like to hear such things; and to me they appeared to be insolent, as well as narrow-minded.  For if you came to that, why might not men, as well as women, be divided into the same three classes, and be pronounced upon by women, as beings even more devoid than their gentle judges of reason?  Moreover, I knew, both from my own sense, and from the greatest of all great poets, that there are, and always have been, plenty of women, good, and gentle, warm-hearted, loving, and lovable; very keen, moreover, at seeing the right, be it by reason, or otherwise.  And upon the whole, I prefer them much to the people of my own sex, as goodness of heart is more important than to show good reason for having it.  And so I said to Jeremy,—­

“You have been ill-treated, perhaps, Master Stickles, by some woman or other?”

“Ah, that have I,” he replied with an oath; “and the last on earth who should serve me so, the woman who was my wife.  A woman whom I never struck, never wronged in any way, never even let her know that I like another better.  And yet when I was at Berwick last, with the regiment on guard there against those vile moss-troopers, what does that woman do but fly in the face of all authority, and of my especial business, by running away herself with the biggest of all moss-troopers?  Not that I cared a groat about her; and I wish the fool well rid of her:  but the insolence of the thing was such that everybody laughed at me; and back I went to London, losing a far better and safer job than this; and all through her.  Come, let’s have another onion.”