there was slashing and spilling, and right on it all, down came the
master to know what it meant!

So James told him he could not make it out, but he could not get the
drop of brandy the laundry-maid had asked for, and his hand would shake
and spill everything, and yet come away he could not.

This got him in for a regular scrape, and the master when he got back to
his wife said: "What has come over the men, they were all right until
that laundry-maid of yours came. Something is up now though. They have
all drawn out their pay, and yet they don't leave, and what can it be
anyway?"

But his wife said she could not hear of the laundry-maid being blamed,
for she was the best servant she had and worth all the rest put
together.

So it went on until one day as the girl stood in the hall door, the
coachman happened to say to the footman: "Do you know how that girl
served me, James?" And then William told about the clothes. The butler
put in, "That was nothing to what she served me," and he told of the
shutters clapping all night.

Just then the master came through the hall, and the girl said: "By
virtue of my three feathers may there be slashing and striving between
master and men, and may all get splashed in the pond."

And so it was, the men fell to disputing which had suffered the most by
her, and when the master came up all would be heard at once and none
listened to him, and it came to blows all round, and the first they knew