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“Go ahead, Hancock!” cried one or two. “‘With transport he gazed–‘ Sing away, man:”

“I will not,” said the tailor, very sulky. “This here’s no fit place for women: and a man has his feelin’s. I’m astonished at you, Sarah–I reely am. The wife of a respectable tradesman!” But he couldn’t look her straight in the face.

“Why, what’s wrong with the company?” she asks, looking around. “Old, young, and middle-aged, I seem to know them all for Saltash men: faults, too, they have to my knowledge: but it passes me what I need to be afeared of. And only a minute since you was singing that your happiness wouldn’t be completed until that a helpmate you’d found. Well, you’ve found her: so sing ahead and be happy.”

“I will not,” says he, still stubborn.

“Oh, yes you will, my little man,” says she in a queer voice, which made him look up and sink his eyes again.

“Well,” says he, making the best of it, “to please the missus, naybours, we’ll sing the whole randigal through. And after that, Sarah”–here he pretended to look at her like one in command– “you’ll walk home with me straight.”

“You may lay to that,” Sal promised him: and so, but in no very firm voice, he pitched to the song again:

With transport he gazed upon her,
His happiness then was complate;
And he blessed the celestial donor
That on him bestowed such a mate–

“I reckon, friends, we’ll leave out the chorus!”

They wouldn’t hear of this, but ri-tooralled away with a will, Sal watching them the while from the doorway with her eyebrows drawn down, like one lost in thought.

She was not took out of his head,
To reign or to triumph o’er man;
She was not took out of his feet,
By man to be tramped upon:
With my fol-de-rol, tooral-i-lay!

But she was took out of his side,
His equal and partner to be:
Though they be yunited in one,
Still the man is the top of the tree!
With my fol-de-rol, tooral-i-lay!

“Well, and what’s wrong wi’ that?” Hancock wound up, feeling for his courage again.

“Get along with ‘ee, you ninth-part-of-a-man! Me took out of your side!”

“Be that as it may, the ‘Fish and Anchor’ is no place for discussing of it,” the man answered, very dignified. “Enough said, my dear! We’ll be getting along home.” He stood up and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.

But Sally was not to be budged. “I knew how ‘twould be,” she spoke up, facing the company. “I took that preacher-fellow ‘pon the ground hop, as I thought, and stopped his nonsense; but something whispered to me that ’twas a false hope. Evil communications corrupt good manners, and now the mischief’s done. There’s no peace for Saltash till you men learn your place again, and I’m resolved to teach it to ‘ee. You want to know how? Well, to start with, by means of a board and a piece o’ chalk, same as they teach at school nowadays.”

She stepped a pace farther into the room, shut home the door behind her, and cast her eye over the ale-scores on the back of it. There were a dozen marks, maybe, set down against her own man’s name; but for the moment she offered no remark on this.

“Mr. Oke,” says she, turning to the landlord, “I reckon you never go without a piece o’ chalk in your pocket. Step this way, if you please, and draw a line for me round what these lords of creation owe ye for drink. Thank’ee. And now be good enough to fetch a chair and stand ‘pon it; I want you to reach so high as you can–Ready? Now take your chalk and write, beginning near the top o’ the door: ‘I, Sarah Hancock–‘”