y, and face to face with
the Fattest Woman I ever saw in my life.

"Mother Moll Drum," quoth my conductor, "save you, and give me a quart
of three threads, or I faint. Body o' me, was ever green plover so
pulled as I was?"

The Fat Woman he called Mother Moll Drum was to all seeming in no very
blessed temper; for she bade Jowler go hang for a lean polecat, and be
cursed meanwhile, and that she would draw him naught.

"Come, come, Mother," Jowler said, making as though to appease her,
"what be these tantrums? Come, draw; for I'm as thirsty as an
hour-glass, poor wretch, that has felt sand run through his gullet any
time these twenty years."

"Draw for yourself, rogue," says Mother Drum; "there's naught I'll serve
you with, unless, indeed, I were bar-woman at St. Giles's Pound, and had
to froth you your last quart, as you went up the Heavy Hill to Tyburn."

"We shall all go there in time--good time," breaks in a deep solemn
voice, drawn somehow through the nose, and coming from the Man-Dog they
called Grumps; "meanwhile, O greasy woman, let the beverage our brother
asked for be drawn, and I, even Grumps, will partake thereof, and ask a
blessing."

"Woman yourself!" cries Moll Drum, in a rage. "Woman yourself, and T----
in your teeth, and woman to the mother that bore you, and sat in the
stocks for Lightness! Who are you, quotha, old reverend smock with the
splay foot? Come up, now, prithee, Bridewell Bird! You will drink, will
you? I saw no dust or cobwebs come out of your mouth. Go hang, you
moon-calf, false faucet, you roaring horse-courser, you ranger of
Turnbull, you dull malt-house with a mouth of a peck and the sign of the
swallow above."

By this time Mother Drum was well-nigh out of breath, and panted, and
looked so hot, that they might have put her up by Temple Bar on Queen
Bess's birthnight for a Bonfire, and so saved Tar Barrels. And as she
spoke she brandished a large Frying Pan, from which great drops of hot
grease--smelling very savoury by the way--dropped on to the sanded
floor. The other Blacks seemed in nowise disturbed by this Dispute, but
were rather amused thereby, and gathered in a ring round Jowler and
Grumps and the Fat Woman, laughing.

"Never mind, Mother Drum," quoth one; "she was a pig-woman once in
Bartlemy Fair, and lost her temper through the heat of a coal-fire
roasting porkers. Was't not hot, Mother Drum? was not Tophet a kind of
cool cellar to it?"

It was Surly who spoke, and