CHAP.VI.
How the Nurse dreamt thatJohn Bullhad banished all the weavers.
We may believe that after so busy a day, as we have been describing, the Nurse was not likely to get a very good night’s rest; starting, tumbling and tossing she had in abundance, but very little sound sleep. She could not shut an eye, but presently she dreamtof some mischief or other. One time she thought the pan boiled over in the fire; at another time, that the cat’s paw was in the custard; and finally, about three o’clock in the morning, she dreamt that John Bull had banished all the weavers from his house; she saw the beams, the tradles, the shuttles, the pirns, all tumbled in a heap into a great black boat; she saw all the weavers posting to embark. When she would have seized a piece of broad cloth, behold it was a great iron cannon! When she put out her hand to save a pirn, lo, it perked up in her face in the make of a pistol! Terror and amazement awaked her; she forgot her resolution never to talk any more to John Bull about his affairs, and thought herself now called upon byheaven, to interpose in behalf of him and his children.
Accordingly, she lost no time in the morning, but went straight to the parlour, where she found John as busy as ever, talking about the orders he was to give in his house: and having told him her dream, earnestly beseeched him to tell her, whether he had any such intention, with relation to the weavers; for she thought that a person, who had ceased to be guided by her, would stick at nothing.
“The woman is crazy,” says John: “I am only thinking how I may best secure the peace and welfare of my family, and how to keep off rogues; and you ask me, if I am to banish my weavers?I’ll defend my weavers to the last drop of my blood; they shall fare no worse than I do; late or early, if they are molested, I shall be with them, and I know that they will stand by me against all the world.”
“What better protection can you desire for yourself or them,” says the nurse, “than your own game-keeper, or Rousterdivel? It would do one good to see, how that fine tall fellow will stop and turn, and do what he is bid.”
“A plague take the woman,” says John, “with her Rousterdivel; do you think that I am a coward, a scoundrel, a beast, a blockhead, a milk-sop, that I must always run for protection to other people? I tell you again, that I amable to defend myself, and that I have people enow about my house to stand by me.”
“And how do you propose that they should stand by you?” says the nurse: “When Lewis sends over his game-keepers, with their guns and their sabres, who will stand by you then?”
“Odso,” says John, “cannot my people have guns and sabres as well as they?”
“Alas! then,” says the nurse, “my dream is read. You will not have a weaver in your house in three days, if you go on at that rate: who do you think will sit quietly on a loom, with guns and pistols pointing at them in every corner, and that boy George puttingcrackers in the candles, and firing his pistols at sparrows, and shooting the neighbours cats when they come about the hedges? See who can settle to work for you, if they are in perpetual danger of having their eyes blown out with squibs, serpents and rackets? Do you think a tradesman can do any good if he is scared at that rate?”
“Scared!” says John, “you don’t think that a weaver will be scared when he turns game-keeper, and I have none better on my grounds. If any of my people are afraid of a gun, so much the more shame to them and to me; it is the very thing I want to correct, by using them a little to what may be necessary for their own defence and mine.”
“Worse and worse,” says the nurse: “if you use them to guns, you’ll never get them to work a jot; and banishing the trade is worse than banishing the men.”
“A tenfold madness has seized your pericranium,” says John; “do you think that nobody can make broad cloth but cowards; or that a fellow won’t work, because he knows he can defend the fruits of his labour? You have no objection to the taking as many of my tradesmen as you can get, to make game-keepers of them; and because they work none, you imagine that every fellow who takes a firelock in his hand to defend himself and me, is to be idle too. Don’t the game-keepers themselves work when they are allowed,and are paid for it? have not I known them give money to their overseers, for leave to work at their own trades? and many a good penny has been got in that way. As my people are useful to me, and to themselves, I intend that they shall work in safety, and that nobody shall insult an honest tradesman of mine, whilst they and I have breath in our bodies. Do what you will, you shall never get me disgraced as you have done, with your idle jaw and nonsensical trash.”
“Bless me,” says the nurse, “what a wild project you have got in your head! You’ll tell me you want to defend your house and your estate; but to what purpose keep your estate, if you cannot find time, so much as to eat a bit of warm victuals; hurried late and early,banged, soused and drenched in all weathers, and this for fear that Lewis Baboon should turn you out of your possessions; and what matter who has your possessions, if you cannot sit down to enjoy them?Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.”
“Hey-day,” says John, “your humble servant, Latin! I remember you of old.” “But goody,” says he, “I knew you lived among the boys; but don’t think to palm upon me as a commendation of eating and drinking and cowardice, what the old boy for whom I have so often been whipped, damn him, has said against a fellow who would forfeit his honour to preserve his life.”
“Well then,” says the nurse, “see how you can keep your bargain withSir Thomas. What will he say, when he sees your house swarming with pistols and carabines, and cutlasses? you know that he does not chuse to trust any body in this house with gun-powder, except the game-keeper.”
“Blood-and-wounds,” says John, “you are more mindful of Sir Thomas than you are of me. I have heard nothing from you these twenty years, but Sir Thomas does not like this, and Sir Thomas does not like that. I was advised to take Sir Thomas into the management of my affairs, because Squire Geoffrey endeavoured to get a game-keeper of his own, and do what he pleased about my house. And now you tell me, that Sir Thomas andthe game-keeper are the only people to be trusted. Those gentlemen, it seems, will trust nobody else, and who the devil will trust them? I never knew any of those suspicious people, that was much to be trusted himself. Ill doers are ill dreaders, as my sister Peg says. Odso, if Sir Thomas does not think himself safe in my parlour with me and my children, he must know of something worse than I thought of. Who was it that brought him about the house? Have not I done all that lay in my power for him? And now you and he won’t let me defend myself, because he won’t trust me. I love Sir Thomas; I mean, that he shall have the disposal of all the arms about my house, and he shall find that I am his friend, when Hubble-bubble and you are in your graves, and all thenonsense you are perpetually putting in his head and mine, is not worth a curse.”