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. His little
eyes gazed at her with long-suffering malice.

"You are my wife," he answered pregnantly, as who would say:
Thus is my folly clearly proven! and seeing that the assertion
was not one that admitted of dispute, Mistress Quinn was
silent.

"Oh, 'tis ill done!" he broke out a moment later. "Shame on me
for it; it is ill done!"

"If you have done it 'tis sure to be ill done, and shame on you
in good sooth - but for what?" put in his wife.

"For sending those poor jaded beasts upon the road."

"What beasts?"

"What beasts? Do I keep turtles? My horses, woman."

"And whither have you sent them?"

"To Denham with the baggage that came hither this morning in
the company of that very fierce gentleman who was in such a pet