“Eh! but, Missis, I can tell you his name—­the gentleman’s name,” said Sedgett, placably.  “He’s a Mr. Algernon Blancove, and a cousin by marriage, or something, of Mrs. Lovell.”

“I reckon you’re right about that, goodman,” replied Mrs. Boulby, with intuitive discernment of the true from the false, mingled with a desire to show that she was under no obligation for the news.  “All t’ other’s a tale of your own, and you know it, and no more true than your rigmaroles about my brandy, which is French; it is, as sure as my blood’s British.”

“Oh!  Missis,” quoth Sedgett, maliciously, “as to tales, you’ve got witnesses enough it crassed chann’l.  Aha!  Don’t bring ’em into the box.  Don’t you bring ’em into ne’er a box.”

“You mean to say, Mr. Sedgett, they won’t swear?”

“No, Missis; they’ll swear, fast and safe, if you teach ’em.  Dashed if they won’t run the Pilot on a rock with their swearin’.  It ain’t a good habit.”

“Well, Mr. Sedgett, the next time you drink my brandy and find the consequences bad, you let me hear of it.”

“And what’ll you do, Missis, may be?”

Listeners were by, and Mrs. Boulby cruelly retorted; “I won’t send you home to your wife;” which created a roar against this hen-pecked man.

“As to consequences, Missis, it’s for your sake I’m looking at them,” Sedgett said, when he had recovered from the blow.

“You say that to the Excise, Mr. Sedgett; it, belike, ’ll make ’em sorry.”

“Brandy’s your weak point, it appears, Missis.”

“A little in you would stiffen your back, Mr. Sedgett.”

“Poor Bob Eccles didn’t want no stiffening when he come down first,” Sedgett interjected.

At which, flushing enraged, Mrs. Boulby cried:  “Mention him, indeed!  And him and you, and that son of your’n—­the shame of your cheeks if people say he’s like his father.  Is it your son, Nic Sedgett, thinks to inform against me, as once he swore to, and to get his wage that he may step out of a second bankruptcy? and he a farmer!  You let him know that he isn’t feared by me, Sedgett, and there’s one here to give him a second dose, without waiting for him to use clasp-knives on harmless innocents.”

“Pacify yourself, ma’am, pacify yourself,” remarked Sedgett, hardened against words abroad by his endurance of blows at home.  “Bob Eccles, he’s got his hands full, and he, maybe, ’ll reach the hulks before my Nic do, yet.  And how ’m I answerable for Nic, I ask you?”

“More luck to you not to be, I say; and either, Sedgett, you does woman’s work, gossipin’ about like a cracked bell-clapper, or men’s the biggest gossips of all, which I believe; for there’s no beating you at your work, and one can’t wish ill to you, knowing what you catch.”