Australian Tales - Setis

Mrs. Lemonpip had seated herself on a kitchen stool, and began to
operate on the eyes and skins of the potatoes in her lap, and to knock the
cat's nose now and then with the handle of her knife, when rat-tat-tat
rattled the brass knocker again, in a sort of imperative mood.
“If this is another hawker, or beggar,” exclaimed the little woman,
rising and taking off her kitchen apron, at the same time looking
wrathfully round, as if for some deadly weapon, “I declare, if this is
another of those pests of my life, I'll knock him down with — with this
bar of soap; (which happened to be the most formidable instrument of
torture within her view at the moment,) or kick his basket into the gutter.
Eleven times this blessed morning have I danced along the hall to the
tune of that tormenting knocker, and that's quite enough to wrinkle the
smoothest temper in the world. Confound the knocker, I say, I've a great
mind to unscrew it and throw it down the well, for its clatter annoys me
more than the three pianos in the boarding-school next door.” Thus
grumbled little Mrs. Lemonpip, as she again trotted to the front door, her
puckered face red with the combined influence of wrath, kitchen fire, and
“old tom.”
“Hey day, Betsy, my little pigeon!” shouted a fat, merry-faced old man,
stepping into the passage when the door was opened wide enough to
receive him. “Why what's the matter, ducky? have you scalded your foot
again, or knocked your bad knee, or has the soot choked up the kitchen
stove and spoiled your cookery and your temper too. What ails my little
popgun! cheer up and tell your Jacky all about it,” continued the merry
old man; at the same time lovingly attempting to kiss his wife. But she
looked as combative as a live lobster, and snappishly told him to have
done with his nonsense, and monkey tricks, or she should lose her temper
and perhaps slap his face and then be sorry for it. “I'm fairly mithered to
death with kitchen work and that noisy knocker,” whined Mrs.
Lemonpip, making her way into the kitchen again, closely followed by
Mr. Lemonpip, who was trying his utmost to comfort her, but with
scarcely any perceptible effect, for she was inconsolably cross, and
instead of cheering up, as her hopeful husband advised her to do, she sat
down and rubbed her tearful eyes with a rough roller towel, until they
looked like pickled onions in red cabbage liquor, and as she rubbed, she
vociferously declared that there was not a woman in Sydney so wofully
troubled as she.
“Come, come, Betty, my bird! don't fret, don't fret,” said Mr.
Lemonpip, soothingly, “some of your troubles will soon be over, deary,
and I'll take good care you shall never have this scullery maid's work to
do again, for it spoils your natural amiability, sours your complexion, as
well as besmuts it, and makes me as downhearted as an old buttonless
bachelor, or a bear chained to a post. When is our new maid to be here,
Betsy?”