Yet that pleasure, one would think, could scarcely atone for the
constant presence among them of an uninvited guest--a guest, too, who
had not much choice in the matter of personal cleanliness. However,
trifles of that nature did not greatly embarrass folk in days innocent
of sanitary science. As for Lowes, it must have been difficult so to act
consistent with the maintenance of any shred of dignity, or of
conciliatory cheerfulness. If, for example, the cook should happen of a
morning to have got out of bed "wrong foot first," how often must the
attentions of that domestic have taken the form of a pot or a pan, or
other domestic utensil, flung at his head. Here, no soft answer would be
likely to turn away wrath. On the spur of the moment, when a pot, or an
iron spit, has caught one on elbow or shins, it might not be altogether
easy to think promptly of the repartee likely to be the most
conciliating. And he could not "make himself scarce." The situation was
embarrassing.
Now, the law, in those breezy times, took small cognisance of such
little freaks as this; the law, indeed, was pretty powerless up among
those wild hills. It wanted some force stronger, or, at all events, some
force less magnificently deliberate, than that of the law.
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