’One ’d think, really, his bed was a frying-pan, and him a live fish in it,’ said the landlady.  ’Oh—­there, again!  My goodness! have he got a flea?’

The thought was alarming.  Mrs. Mel joined in: 

‘Or a ------’

‘Don’t! don’t, my dear!’ she was cut short.  ‘Oh! one o’ them little things ‘d be ruin to me.  To think o’ that!  Hark at him!  It must be.  And what’s to do?  I ’ve sent the maids to bed.  We haven’t a man.  If I was to go and knock at his door, and ask?’

‘Better try and get him to be quiet somehow.’

‘Ah!  I dare say I shall make him fire out fifty times worse.’

Mrs. Hawkshaw stipulated that Mrs. Mel should stand by her, and the two women went up-stairs and stood at Old Tom’s door.  There they could hear him fuming and muttering imprecations, and anon there was an interval of silence, and then the room was shaken, and the cursings recommenced.

’It must be a fight he ‘s having with a flea,’ said the landlady.  ’Oh! pray heaven, it is a flea.  For a flea, my dear-gentlemen may bring that theirselves; but a b-----, that’s a stationary, and born of a bed.  Don’t you hear?  The other thing ’d give him a minute’s rest; but a flea’s hop-hop-off and on.  And he sound like an old gentleman worried by a flea.  What are you doing?’

Mrs. Mel had knocked at the door.  The landlady waited breathlessly for the result.  It appeared to have quieted Old Tom.

‘What’s the matter?’ said Mrs. Mel, severely.

The landlady implored her to speak him fair, and reflect on the desperate things he might attempt.

‘What’s the matter?  Can anything be done for you?’

Mr. Tom Cogglesby’s reply comprised an insinuation so infamous regarding women when they have a solitary man in their power, that it cannot be placed on record.

‘Is anything the matter with your bed?’

’Anything?  Yes; anything is the matter, ma’am.  Hope twenty live geese inside it’s enough-eh?  Bed, do you call it?  It’s the rack!  It’s damnation!  Bed?  Ha!’

After delivering this, he was heard stamping up and down the room.

‘My very best bed!’ whispered the landlady.  ’Would it please you, sir, to change—­I can give you another?’

‘I’m not a man of experiments, ma’am-’specially in strange houses.’

‘So very, very sorry!’

‘What the deuce!’ Old Tom came close to the door.  ’You whimpering!  You put a man in a beast of a bed—­you drive him half mad—­and then begin to blubber!  Go away.’

‘I am so sorry, sir!’

’If you don’t go away, ma’am, I shall think your intentions are improper.’

‘Oh, my goodness!’ cried poor Mrs. Hawkshaw.  ‘What can one do with him?’ Mrs. Mel put Mrs. Hawkshaw behind her.

‘Are you dressed?’ she called out.

In this way Mrs. Mel tackled Old Tom.  He was told that should he consent to cover himself decently, she would come into his room and make his bed comfortable.  And in a voice that dispersed armies of innuendoes, she bade him take his choice, either to rest quiet or do her bidding.  Had Old Tom found his master at last, and in one of the hated sex?  Breathlessly Mrs. Hawkshaw waited his answer, and she was an astonished woman when it came.