“Medlar-like, Old Rogers, I doubt,—­rotten before we’re ripe,” replied his wife, quoting a more humorous than refined proverb.

“Nay, nay, old ’oman.  Don’t ’e say so.  The Lord won’t let us rot before we’re ripe, anyhow.  That I be sure on.”

“But, anyhow, it’s ail very well to talk.  Thou knows how to talk, Rogers.  But how will it be when the children comes, and no mill?”

“To grind ’em in, old ’oman?”

Mrs Rogers turned to me, who was listening with real interest, and much amusement.

“I wish you would speak a word to Old Rogers, sir.  He never will speak as he’s spoken to.  He’s always over merry, or over serious.  He either takes me up short with a sermon, or he laughs me out of countenance that I don’t know where to look.”

Now I was pretty sure that Rogers’s conduct was simple consistency, and that the difficulty arose from his always acting upon one or two of the plainest principles of truth and right; whereas his wife, good woman—­for the bad, old leaven of the Pharisees could not rise much in her somehow—­was always reminding him of certain precepts of behaviour to the oblivion of principles.  “A bird in the hand,” &c.—­“Marry in haste,” &c.—­“When want comes in at the door love flies out at the window,” were amongst her favourite sayings; although not one of them was supported by her own experience.  For instance, she had married in haste herself, and never, I believe, had once thought of repenting of it, although she had had far more than the requisite leisure for doing so.  And many was the time that want had come in at her door, and the first thing it always did was to clip the wings of Love, and make him less flighty, and more tender and serviceable.  So I could not even pretend to read her husband a lecture.

“He’s a curious man, Old Rogers,” I said.  “But as far as I can see, he’s in the right, in the main.  Isn’t he now?”

“Oh, yes, I daresay.  I think he’s always right about the rights of the thing, you know.  But a body may go too far that way.  It won’t do to starve, sir.”

Strange confusion—­or, ought I not rather to say?—­ordinary and commonplace confusion of ideas!

“I don’t think,” I said, “any one can go too far in the right way.”

“That’s just what I want my old ’oman to see, and I can’t get it into her, sir.  If a thing’s right, it’s right, and if a thing’s wrong, why, wrong it is.  The helm must either be to starboard or port, sir.”

“But why talk of starving?” I said.  “Can’t Dick work?  Who could think of starting that nonsense?”

“Why, my old ’oman here.  She wants ’em to give it up, and wait for better times.  The fact is, she don’t want to lose the girl.”

“But she hasn’t got her at home now.”

“She can have her when she wants her, though—­leastways after a bit of warning.  Whereas, if she was married, and the consequences a follerin’ at her heels, like a man-o’-war with her convoy, she would find she was chartered for another port, she would.”