With this piece of self-admonition he had perforce to content himself. Drowsiness was stealing over him, and he could do no more. He had just enough energy left to consider his situation, briefly and finally, in its immediate and practical aspect. He resolved to have done, once and for all, with this nonsensical notion of going to bed. He would make a night of it down here in the warmth of the inn parlour, and when his wife came in the morning and found him he would tell her that he had risen early from her side and left her sleeping. She would perhaps not believe him; she would perhaps hale him upstairs and point accusingly at the undented pillow; she would perhaps upbraid him. But he was too wretched, too happy, above all too sleepy, to care very much what she said or did, poor stupid woman: for once he would please himself, let her say what she might. He fetched a couple of cushions from the other room, arranged them on the settle, and pillowed his head snugly. And was soon asleep.
He woke with a start an hour or so later, fancying he had heard a tapping at the door. He felt stiff and cold and unrefreshed. He rubbed his head vigorously, and yawned. And now there was certainly a knock at the door. So it was no fancy after all, he said to himself. There’s someone outside, and I must go see who tis. ‘A queer time for paying calls,’ he grumbled, with a glance at the clock. He heaved himself off the seat and padded in his stocking’d feet half way across the brick floor. There he stopped, to yawn again, and to toy with a vague hope that the visitor had got tired of waiting and had gone away. Although it was within half an hour of the family’s time for rising, he was suspicious and resentful of anyone who could come knocking at his door when all honest folk, as he told himself, were safe and sound in bed. His mood was exceedingly moral this morning, and he did not at all approve of the irregular life. But the visitor had by no means gone away: he rattled the door furiously and drummed upon it with his clenched fists. ‘Now bless my soul,’ said Mr Bailey, staring cantankerously at the door, ‘what a to-do upon my word! You’d think murder was done by the way that fellow be buffeting the door. Haply tis my fine gentleman come back to pay his reckoning.’ Being in no mood for fine gentlemen, being in no mood for anything but food and drink and a warm bed, he made no further move towards the door, but stood rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and yawning prodigiously, and reflecting on the vanity of human wishes. When the knocking began again he resumed his grumbling. ‘What right or title has he to be let in? Tell me that,’ he demanded of himself. ‘He went out of his own will and accord, didn’t he? Very well then. Let him stay out.
when he comes back. Hold your noise, you dirty scamp, while I finish my couplet.
Weak, Bailey. Very weak, my friend. Try again.
Oh, a pox take the rhymes! And a pox take you!’ he added heartily, with his hand on the bolt. ‘This is no time to drag a man out of his bed.’ He opened the door. ‘And what—oh, so tis you, Harry Noke? You’re up betimes this morning. What’s amiss with your face, man? Tis an ugly bruise, that.’