Mayow exclaimed, rising from her knees; "if it
isn't Hester already! Amelia, get out and dry yourself while I make a
cup of tea."

Hester took a step forward, but paused at a sound of dismal bumping on
the staircase leading up from the passage.

"That's Elizabeth Ann," said Mrs. Mayow composedly, "or Heber, or
both. We shall know when they get to the bottom. My dear, you must be
perishing for a cup of tea. Oh, it's Elizabeth Ann! Cherry, go and
smack her, and tell her what I'll do if she falls downstairs again.
It's all Matthew Henry's fault." Here she turned on the naked urchin
with the churchwarden pipe. "If he'd only been home to his time--"

"I was listening to Zeke Penhaligon," said Matthew Henry (aged eight).
"He's home to-day in the _Touch-me-not_."

"He's no good to King nor country," said Mrs. Mayow.

"He was telling me about a man that got swallowed by a whale--"

"Go away with your Jonahses!" sneered one of his sisters.

"It wasn't Jonah. This man's name was Jones--_Captain_ Jones, from
Dundee. A whale swallowed him; but, as it happened, the whale had
swallowed a cask just before, and the cask stuck in its stomach. So
whatever the whale swallowed after that went into the cask, and did
the whale no good. But Captain Jones had plenty to eat till he cut his
way out with a clasp-knife--"

"How _could_ he?"

"That's all you know. Zeke _says_ he did. A whale always turns that way
up when he's dying. So Captain Jones cut his way into daylight, when,
what does he see but a sail, not a mile away! He fell on his knees--"

"How could he, you silly? He'd have slipped."

But at this point Cherry swept the family off to bed. Mrs. Mayow,
putting forth unexpected strength, carried the tubs out to the
back-yard, and poured the soapy water into the harbour. Hester, having
borrowed a touzer,[A] tucked up her sleeves and fell to tidying the
kitchen. Mr. Mayow went on tuning his fiddle. It was against his
principles to work on a Saturday night.

[Footnote A: _Tout-serve_, apron.]

"Your wife seems very strong," observed Hester, with a shade of
reproach in her voice.

"Strong as a horse," he assented cheerfully. "I call it wonnerful
after what she've a-gone through. 'Twouldn' surprise me, one o' these
days, to hear she'd taken up a tub with the cheeld in it, and heaved
cheeld and all over the quay-door. She's terrible absent in her mind."

Mrs. Mayow came panting back with a kettleful of water, which she set
to