or. I then ordered Mrs.
Francis to be called in, in order to give her instructions concerning
it; in particular, what I would have roasted and what baked; concluding
that she would be highly pleased with the prospect of so much money
being spent in her house as she might have now reason to expect, if
the wind continued only a few days longer to blow from the same points
whence it had blown for several weeks past.

I soon saw good cause, I must confess, to despise my own sagacity. Mrs.
Francis, having received her orders, without making any answer, snatched
the side from the floor, which remained stained with blood, and, bidding
a servant to take up that on the table, left the room with no pleasant
countenance, muttering to herself that, "had she known the litter which
was to have been made, she would not have taken such pains to wash her
house that morning. If this was gentility, much good may it do such
gentlefolks; for her part she had no notion of it." From these murmurs
I received two hints. The one, that it was not from a mistake of
our inclination that the good woman had starved us, but from wisely
consulting her own dignity, or rather perhaps her vanity, to which our
hunger was offered up as a sacrifice. The other, that I was now sitting
in a damp room, a circumstance, though it had hitherto escaped my notice
from the color of the bricks, which was by no means to be neglected in a
valetudinary state.

My wife, who, besides discharging excellently well her own and all
the tender offices becoming the female character; who, besides being
a faithful friend, an amiable companion, and a tender nurse, could
likewise supply the wants of a decrepit husband, and occasionally
perform his part, had, before this, discovered the immoderate attention
to neatness in Mrs. Francis, and provided against its ill consequences.
She had found, though not under the same roof, a very snug apartment
belonging to Mr. Francis, and which had escaped the mop by his wife's
being satisfied it could not possibly be visited by gentle-folks. This
was a dry, warm, oaken-floored barn, lined on both sides with wheaten
straw, and opening at one end into a green field and a beautiful
prospect. Here, without hesitation, she ordered the cloth to be laid,
and came hastily to snatch me from worse perils by water than the common
dangers of the sea.

Mrs. Francis, who could not trust her own ears, or could not believe a
footman in so extraordinary a pheno