All this while, the bully above continued his maledictions.
"Send that slut back to me!" he roared. "Do you think that I am
going to be left alone in this hole? Send her back, or--" and he
added half-a-dozen oaths of a kind to make an honest man's blood
boil. In the midst of this, however, and while the woman was
still contending with her husband, he suddenly stopped and
shrieked in anguish, crying out for the salt-bath.
But the woman, whom her husband had only half-pacified, shook her
fist at the ceiling with a laugh of defiance. "Shriek; ay, you
may shriek, you wretch!" she cried. "You must be waited on by
my girl, must you--no older face will do for you--and you beat
her? Your horses must eat corn, must they, while we eat grass?
And we buy salt for you, and wheaten bread for you, and are
beggars for you! For you, you thieving wretch, who tax the poor
and let the rich go free; who--"
"Silence, woman!" her husband cried, cutting her short, with a
pale face. "Hush, hush; he will hear you!"
But the woman was too far gone in rage to obey.
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