'I think,' observed the Carrier, 'that I should chuck any man out of window, who said there wasn't.'
The Carrier was puzzled, and made uncomfortable and uncertain, in spite of himself.
It was a loud cry from the Carrier's wife: a loud, sharp, sudden cry, that made the room ring, like a glass vessel.
'Mary!' exclaimed the Carrier, supporting her in his arms.
The Carrier had been so much astounded by his little wife, and so busily engaged in soothing and tending her, that he had scarcely been conscious of the Stranger's presence, until now, when he again stood there, their only guest.
'Oh!' said the Carrier, surprised by the rapidity of this consent.
As she hurried off to do it, the flutter of her spirits, and the agitation of her manner, were so strange that the Carrier stood looking after her, quite confounded.
With that unaccountable attraction of the mind to trifles, which is often incidental to a state of doubt and confusion, the Carrier as he walked slowly to and fro, found himself mentally repeating even these absurd words, many times.
What frightened Dot, I wonder!' mused the Carrier, pacing to and fro.
As to the tobacco, she was perfect mistress of the subject; and her lighting of the pipe, with a wisp of paper, when the Carrier had it in his mouth--going so very near his nose, and yet not scorching it--was Art, high Art.
The Carrier, in his smoothing forehead and expanding face, acknowledged it, the readiest of all.
Old Carriers too, appeared, with blind old Boxers lying at their feet; and newer carts with younger drivers ('Peerybingle Brothers' on the tilt); and sick old Carriers, tended by the gentlest hands; and graves of dead and gone old Carriers, green in the churchyard.