in his daily garb, sufficiently subdued to be civil and explain the cause
of his discomfort. Lumps in his bed: he was bruised by them. He
supposed he couldn't ask women to judge for themselves--they'd be
shrieking--but he could assure them he was blue all down his back.
Mrs. Mel and Mrs. Hawkshaw turned the bed about, and punched it, and
rolled it.

'Ha!' went Old Tom, 'what's the good of that? That's just how I found
it. Moment I got into bed geese began to put up their backs.'

Mrs. Mel seldom indulged in a joke, and then only when it had a
proverbial cast. On the present occasion, the truth struck her forcibly,
and she said:

'One fool makes many, and so, no doubt, does one goose.'

Accompanied by a smile the words would have seemed impudent; but spoken
as a plain fact, and with a grave face, it set Old Tom blinking like a
small boy ten minutes after the whip.

'Now,' she pursued, speaking to him as to an old child, 'look here. This
is how you manage. Knead down in the middle of the bed. Then jump into
the hollow. Lie there, and you needn't wake till morning.'

Old Tom came to the side of the bed. He had prepared himself for a
wretched night, an uproar, and eternal complaints against the house, its
inhabitants, and its foundations; but a woman stood there who as much as
told him that digging his fist into the flock and jumping into the hole--
into that hole under his, eyes--was all that was wanted! that he had
been making a noise for nothing, and because he had not the wit to hit on