“Nonsense!  It’s the silliest lie a sensible man like you ever believed, to say a woman makes a house comfortable.  It’s a story got up because the women are there and something must be found for ’em to do.  I tell you there isn’t a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it’s bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better ha’ been left to the men—­it had better ha’ been left to the men.  I tell you, a woman ’ull bake you a pie every week of her life and never come to see that the hotter th’ oven the shorter the time.  I tell you, a woman ’ull make your porridge every day for twenty years and never think of measuring the proportion between the meal and the milk—­a little more or less, she’ll think, doesn’t signify.  The porridge will be awk’ard now and then:  if it’s wrong, it’s summat in the meal, or it’s summat in the milk, or it’s summat in the water.  Look at me!  I make my own bread, and there’s no difference between one batch and another from year’s end to year’s end; but if I’d got any other woman besides Vixen in the house, I must pray to the Lord every baking to give me patience if the bread turned out heavy.  And as for cleanliness, my house is cleaner than any other house on the Common, though the half of ’em swarm with women.  Will Baker’s lad comes to help me in a morning, and we get as much cleaning done in one hour, without any fuss, as a woman ’ud get done in three, and all the while be sending buckets o’ water after your ankles, and let the fender and the fire-irons stand in the middle o’ the floor half the day for you to break your shins against ’em.  Don’t tell me about God having made such creatures to be companions for us!  I don’t say but He might make Eve to be a companion to Adam in Paradise—­there was no cooking to be spoilt there, and no other woman to cackle with and make mischief, though you see what mischief she did as soon as she’d an opportunity.  But it’s an impious, unscriptural opinion to say a woman’s a blessing to a man now; you might as well say adders and wasps, and foxes and wild beasts are a blessing, when they’re only the evils that belong to this state o’ probation, which it’s lawful for a man to keep as clear of as he can in this life, hoping to get quit of ’em for ever in another—­hoping to get quit of ’em for ever in another.”

Bartle had become so excited and angry in the course of his invective that he had forgotten his supper, and only used the knife for the purpose of rapping the table with the haft.  But towards the close, the raps became so sharp and frequent, and his voice so quarrelsome, that Vixen felt it incumbent on her to jump out of the hamper and bark vaguely.

“Quiet, Vixen!” snarled Bartle, turning round upon her.  “You’re like the rest o’ the women—­always putting in your word before you know why.”