As he made fast the door of the stableyard after she had passed out, he ominously shook his hoary head and muttered to himself humble, hostelry-flavoured philosophies touching the strange ways of men with women, and the stranger ways of women with men.

Then, taking up his lanthorn, he slowly retraced his steps to the buttery where his wife was awaiting him.
With sleeves rolled high above her pink and deeply-dimpled elbows stood Mistress Quinn at work upon the fashioning of a pastry, when her husband entered and set down his lanthorn with a sigh.
"To be so plagued," he growled.

"To be browbeaten by a slip of a wench--a fine gentleman's baggage with the airs and vapours of a lady of quality.

Am I not a fool to have endured it ?" "Certainly you are a fool," his wife agreed, kneading diligently, "whatever you may have endured.

What now ?" His fat face was puckered into a thousand wrinkles.