"Well, then, I will tell you. Tib is the cook for
the major-domo over there--a black-eyed, false, coquettish little
devil, who is bad and mean enough to troll away the lover of an
honest and virtuous woman, as I am; a lover who is such a pitiful
little thing that one would think no one but myself could find him
out and see him; nor could I have done it had I not for forty years
trained my eyes to the search, and for forty years looked around for
the man who was at length to marry me, and make me a respectable
mistress. Since my eyes then were at last steadily fixed on this
phantom of man, and I found nothing there, I finally discovered you,
you cobweb of a man!"
"What! you call me a cobweb?" screamed Hodge, as he crept from under
the table, and, drawing himself up to his full height, placed
himself threateningly in front of Gammer Gurton's elbow-chair. "You
call me a cobweb? Now, I swear to you that you shall henceforth
never more be the spider that dwells in that web! For you are a
garden-spider, an abominable, dumpy, old garden-spider, for whom a
web, such as Hodge is, is much too fine and much too elegant. Be
quiet, therefore, old spider, and spin your net elsewhere! You shall
not live in my net, but Tib--for, yes, I do know Tib. She is a
lovely, charming child of fourteen, as quick and nimble as a kid,
with lips red as the coral which you wear on your fat pudding of a
neck, with eyes which shine yet brighter than your nose, and with a
figure so slender and graceful that she might have been carved out
of one of your fingers.
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