The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

THE EXPEDITION OF HUMPHRY CLINKER 71
longer; because they have been already above three weeks in the
house; and they look for a couple of ginneys apiece at our going
away; and this is a parquisite they expect every month in the
season; being as how no family has a right to stay longer than four
weeks in the same lodgings; and so the cuck swears, she will pin
the dish-clout to mistress’s tail; and the house-maid vows, she’ll
put cowitch in master’s bed, if so be he don’t discamp without
furder ado—I don’t blame them for making the most of their
market, in the way of vails and parquisites; and I defy the devil to
say I am a tail-carrier, or ever brought a poor sarvant into trouble—
But then they oft to have some conscience, in vronging those that
be sarvants like themselves—For you must no, Molly, I missed
three-quarters of blond lace, and a remnant of muslin, and my
silver thimble; which was the gift of true love: they were all in my
work-basket, that I left upon the table in the sarvants-hall, when
mistresses bell rung; but if they had been under lock and kay,
’twould have been all the same; for there are double keys to all the
locks in Bath; and they say as how the very teeth an’t safe in your
head, if you sleep with your mouth open—And so says I to myself,
them things could not go without hands; and so I’ll watch their waters:
and so I did with a vitness; for then it was I found Bett consarned
with O Frizzle. And as the cuck had thrown her slush at me, be-
cause I had taken part with Chowder, when he fit with the turnspit,
I resolved to make a clear kitchen, and throw some of her fat into
the fire. I ketched the chare-woman going out with her load in the
morning, before she thought I was up, and brought her to mistress
with her whole cargo—Marry, what do’st think she had got in the
name of God? Her buckets were foaming full of our best bear, and
her lap was stuffed with a cold tongue, part of a buttock of beef,
half a turkey, and a swinging lump of butter, and the matter of ten
mould kandles, that had scarce ever been lit. The cuck brazened it
out, and said it was her rite to rummage the pantry; and she was
ready for to go before the mare: that he had been her potticary
many years, and would never think of hurting a poor sarvant, for
giving away the scraps of the kitchen—I went another way to work
with madam Betty, because she had been saucy, and called me
skandelus names; and said O Frizzle couldn’t abide me, and twenty
other odorous falsehoods. I got a varrant from the mare, and her
box being sarched by the constable, my things came out sure enuff;
besides a full pound of vax candles, and a nite-cap of mistress, that