CHAPTER XIII.

I SHA’N’T SAY ANYTHING AT ALL ABOUT WHAT’S COMING IN THE PRESENT CHAPTER. ALL I KNOW IS, THAT IT NEARLY DROVE ME STARK STARING MAD, AND OFTEN AND OFTEN I HAVE IN MY AGONY OF MIND BEEN FORCED TO EXCLAIM, IN THE WORDS OF THAT SWEET SINGER, MR. BRAHAM, AS FOLLOWS:—

“Oh! (goodness gracious me) I can bear my fate no longer,E’en hope (’pon my word) is banish’d from my soul!”Recitative to that beautiful ballad of“Through the forests, through the meadows,”in “Der Freischutz,” and which, indeed, I once had the music of, for that charming girl, Miss Emily B-yl-s, was kind enough to copy it out for me, but where it’s gone to now, goodness only knows; most likely some of my beauties of servants have taken it to light the fire, or put the candles up with, or something equally pretty. All I know is, it isn’t to be found in my Canterbury, and it can’t have walked out of the house by itself, that’s clear.

Before taking up the thread of my story from where I dropped it last month, I should like the gentle reader to know what a dreadful fidget Mr. Sk—n—st—n is. Though it is but right to add, that I have comparatively little or nothing to say against my beloved Edward in other respects. But even if I had been blessed with an angel for a husband, and he had unfortunately been a knag, still, I do verily believe that I should have found my lot just as hard to bear with as I do at present. For if there is one thing more trying than another to one’s good temper, or more calculated to rumple the natural smoothness of one’s amiable disposition, and to put one out of sorts with the whole world, and everybody in it, it is to have a man always at one, worry worry, fidget fidget, knag knag, from the first thing when he gets up in the morning, to the last thing when he goes to bed at night. Really any unprejudiced person like myself would believe that Mr. Sk—n—st—n was never happy unless he was trying to see how miserable he could make me; for literallyand truly, without exaggeration, the man’s chief enjoyment seemed to lie in finding fault with, first this thing, then that thing, and then the other. I declare it’s my firm opinion to this very day, that he used to think of nothing else all the way home, but what he could make a noise about directly he set foot in the house. Only just let him be able to write his trumpery name in the dust on the hall chairs, or let the cloth not be laid for dinner ready to receive my fine, greedy gentleman, or let me be in my morning wrapper, and not dressed to the very moment that he knocked at the door (of course it was no matter tohimhow much I had been slaving all through the hot day, just to make him comfortable, oh, no, of course it wasn’t!)—or even if he couldn’t find fault with any of these, only just let the forks be a little dirty between the prongs, or the soup be cold, or a little twopenny-halfpenny caterpillar be in the greens, and then, oh dear me,therewere fine nuts indeed for my lord to crack—he never knew such a house—he didn’t—like a pigstye—of course italwayswas—be better treated at a common tavern, he would (then why didn’t he go there, I should like to know, instead of coming home always grumbling away, like an old Smellfungus as he is). Then of a morning, too, he had no sooner swallowed his breakfast, than he must go dancing down stairs, and stand fiddling for half an hour in the cellar, pretending to be getting his filthy wine out, though of course I knew what my gentleman was after, as well as he himself did, for up stairs he’d trot, with a face as long as my arm, with a whole pack of trumpery complaints, and, as pleased as Punch with the mare’s-nests that my Mr. Clever thought he had discovered. Then out they would come, one after another—first, why weren’t the blacking brushes in their proper place, instead of on the kitchen dresser?—or else, hadn’t he told me over and over again, that he wouldn’t have the servants’ candlesticks put into the fire?—or, why were the cinders all about the passage?—or else, he declared the stones were as black as his hat, and had never been cleaned for a twelvemonth,—in fact, the whole place was a perfect disgrace to me, and positively, he would go on fidgeting and knagging about this, that, and the other, until I lost all patience with him, and told him as plainly as I could, “that he had no business at all down in thekitchen, poking his nose into what didn’t concern him, and that all I wished to goodness gracious was, that the cook would pin a dishclout to his coat tails, and then, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to let him go down to the court at Westminster with it dangling at his heels, if it was only that the Lord Chief Justice of England might see what a mollycoddle and poking meddling thing he was”—and the beauty of it was, that I used to put him in such a passion by telling him that there was a party I knew, who was not a hundred miles from where I was standing, and who was one of the greatest fidgets that I ever came near, and saying in my most tantalising way, “Well, I wouldn’t be a fidget, no, not if anybody was to make me a present of all the gold in the mines of Peru that very moment.”

Methinks that ever and anon I hear the courteous reader exclaiming, “But, my dear Mrs. Sk—n—st—n, this really has nothing at all to do with the subject of your story.” You are right, courteous reader, no more it has; but the truth is, I feel slightly indisposed this morning; in fact, I may say I have not felt myself for this last day or two—I think it is nothing more than a slight attack of the bile after all, and my fair readers will, I’m sure, agree with me, that when one is bilious, there is nothing does one so much good as to be able to speak one’s mind, without any restraint or the fear of ever being taken to task for it. So, as there is no earthly chance of Mr. Sk—n—st—n’s ever meeting with these few candid remarks, why I’m only too glad to have the opportunity of letting my lady readers know what I really think of my pretty gentleman. However, I will try and rally myself, and coax my wandering thoughts back to my subject, though I’m afraid it will be a difficult task for me to accomplish in my present state of feeling, for I’ve a number of little white stars floating about before my eyes, and my right temple is throbbing and aching as if some imp, out of mere mischief, was thumping away at it with a sledge hammer, and I have a shooting pain just between my shoulders as though some one had got a penknife and was digging it into me every other moment. Our medical adviser says I have gone out and caught that nasty influenza which has been flying about our neighbourhood of late; but don’t tell me! I know it’s nothing of the kind, and only my old friend the bile that’s come back again to worry my very life out, and it’s my firm opinion that our medical adviser knows nothing at all about it.

Well, as I was saying, that beauty of a husband of mine is such a fidget, and must always be meddling with what he knows nothing at all about, that I declare all the time I was nursing he wouldn’t let me taste even a little pickle. And of course in a family you can’t be having a hot joint every day of the week, and I wouldn’t give a pin for my dinner when it’s cold meat, and you can’t touch even so much as a gherkin, or a walnut, or a simple mouthful of red cabbage, to give it a relish. When the rhubarb was coming in, too, really it was quite heart-rending. I declare, he wouldn’t let me eat a spoonful of it, though I had gone to the expense of two shillings, like a silly, to buy as beautiful a bundle as I think I ever set eyes on in all my life, and which positively quite made my mouth water when I saw it at the greengrocer’s, it looked such a picture. And the worst of it all was, I had fixed my mind on it so, (for, to tell the truth, it’s a favourite dish of mine,) that I only eat half a dinner, so as to be able to do justice to the lovely large tart I had made. But Mr. Edwardmustknow such a deal about what was good and what was bad for me, thatof coursehe would have it that I should go making the child ill, even if I took as much of the fruit as would lie upon a sixpence, only just as a taste, though I told him that I had bought it principally in the light of medicine, as I had heard mother say over and over again that it was a fine thing to sweeten the blood at the change of the year. But, oh dear me, no! of course my Mr. Wiseacre knew a great deal better than people who had lived twice as long and seen twice as much of the world as he had, and wouldn’t let me have even a thimble full, just to see if it had turned out as well as I had expected (drat him!) saying, “I ought to be as well aware as he was, that such things were not fit for me while I was nursing.” Ought I, indeed!—though, if it comes to that, what on earth canheknow about nursing—a molly-coddle! (Augh! I do detest molly-coddles, and all I can say is, you wont catch me marrying one again in a hurry.)

So as I had got a nurse, and she was coming in shortly, and as my poor little dear pet must be weaned some time or other, I thought it would be better to get that troublesome job over before the new maid entered my service. For I do think it is a perfect cruelty to break a poor thing’s rest every night, for a week at least, with the care of a dear little infant, that of course she doesn’t care a fig about. Besides, I didn’t like to entrust the arduous duty of weaning to a stranger, and my own ever dear mother had made me promise that I would let her have the pleasure of weaning my little chicken. So I thought it would be better, under the circumstances, to make friends with her again, and just get her to take charge of my beautiful little ducks-o’-diamonds for a week or so, especially, too, as Easter Sunday was just coming round; and since I have always made it a religious duty to have a nice little quarter of lamb and a delicious gooseberry pudding with the wood in it, on that day, I felt convinced I should never forgive myself if I wasn’t able to touch a mouthful of the pudding, through Mr. Edward’s taking a mean advantage of my nursing, as I well knew he would only be too glad to do. Besides, to tell the truth, if there’s one thing that I’m more partial to than another, it is to gooseberries with the wood in them, for I do think that, with an egg beaten up in them, just to take the roughness off, you have such an exquisite flavour of the tree in the fruit, that really I should like any lady reader of mine who may be unacquainted with that delicacy of the season, just to try it, (though I can hardly bring myself to believe, that out of the thirty-nine thousand readers I have every month, there can be one among the number who has been wicked heathen enough to have allowed every Easter Sunday of her life to have gone by, without having so much as once partaken of a gooseberry pudding with the wood in it—if so, I blush for her.) Oh! with plenty of sugar, it is delicious; indeed, I may say, heavenly.

While upon this topic, I think it is but right to add, that I have always, ever since I was a child, made it a solemn duty to observe, with the greatest strictness, all the feasts which have been ordained by our venerable mother church. Thank goodness, I can lay my head on my pillow at nightand safely say, that I have never allowed a single year to pass over my head without partaking with great devotion and extreme relish of the plum-pudding and mince-pie of Christmas, the pancake of Shrove Tuesday (by the bye, with a spoonful of gin, it eats just like ratafia, I can assure you) and the divine gooseberry tart of Easter Sunday; though, with all my enthusiasm, I regret to state, I can’t say as much for that filthy salt cod of Ash Wednesday. I cannot let the subject drop here, without adding, that it has cut me to the heart to see a nasty barbarous innovating spirit growing up among us of late, which threatens to destroy all the sacred institutions of our country, and to roll the plum-pudding of our forefathers in the dust. Nor can I, before quitting the theme, help giving this solemn warning to the wives and mothers of England, “Hold fast to your pancakes, or they will be snatched from you before many Shrove Tuesdays are over your heads, as sure as my name is Sk—n—st—n.” If the ruthless despoilers must pull down something, why let them tear our salt fish from us; but in the name of all that is great and good, let them spare us the agony of seeing the gooseberry pudding of our best affections trampled under foot.

However, I must leave my gooseberry pudding for awhile, and return to that sentimental novel-reading creature of a Betsy, of whom I spoke in my last chapter. There was a nice bit of goods for a well regulated establishment like mine! How people can ever bring their minds to give characters to such idle, good-for-nothing affected toads, is a mystery to me, and from the character I had with her, I’m sure I expected that she would have proved nothing less than the treasure I had been on the constant look out for ever since I was married. Lord-a’-mercy upon the woman, I don’t suppose there ever was (or ever will be again, let us hope) another creature like her. I declare, unless you kept her right under your nose all day long, there was no getting her to do a single thing properly; for positively she was so wrapt up in her romances, that directly my eye was off her, she was sure to pull the “Heads of the Headless” out of her pocket, or else spread out “Marianne the Child of Charity,” right before her on the kitchen dresser, and nomatter what she was at, there she would go rubbing and reading and snivelling away, paying a great deal more attention to her trumpery pennyworth of “soul-stirring interest,” than to my work. I’m sure that to have made her perfectly happy, all she wanted was to have been allowed to scrub down the stairs, with a reading-desk set up before her, or else to stick some highly exciting nautico-domestic rubbish at the top of her broom, and read while she swept—in the same way as the military bands stick their music on their hautboys and things, so that they may play while they march.

For, upon my word, often and often have I, after ringing two or three times for the sentimental cat, gone down in the kitchen, and found her with a snuff to the candle as big as a toad-stool, and all of a tremble like an Italian greyhound, over the “Castle Fiend, orthe Fate of the Loved and the Lost, and the Ten Mysteries,” or some other powerfully-written nonsense; and if in my vexation I snatched it from her hand, I was sure to find that, instead of minding the needle-work I had given her, she had been wasting the whole of her evening with such stuff as this:

“Hush! some one comes,” said the Baron Mavaracordo to Canoni—a man of strange aspect and apparel—as they were seated in a richly decorated room in Strademoor Castle.“My lord,” said a man-at-arms, “there come three travellers through the storm, and demand admittance to the castle.”“Do they proclaim their calling and degree?”“They do not; but in the name of hospitality as wanderers, they demand admittance. One is a female, but they are well mounted; and one looks warlike, although clad not in the garments of a knight.” (Clad not! Pretty talk that for a common soldier—of the dark ages, too.)“Admit them; and, with all imaginable speed, show them to the painted closet. I will see them there.”When the man-at-arms had left to perform his errand, the baron turned to his companion, and said,—“It is they.”[B]

“Hush! some one comes,” said the Baron Mavaracordo to Canoni—a man of strange aspect and apparel—as they were seated in a richly decorated room in Strademoor Castle.

“My lord,” said a man-at-arms, “there come three travellers through the storm, and demand admittance to the castle.”

“Do they proclaim their calling and degree?”

“They do not; but in the name of hospitality as wanderers, they demand admittance. One is a female, but they are well mounted; and one looks warlike, although clad not in the garments of a knight.” (Clad not! Pretty talk that for a common soldier—of the dark ages, too.)

“Admit them; and, with all imaginable speed, show them to the painted closet. I will see them there.”

When the man-at-arms had left to perform his errand, the baron turned to his companion, and said,—

“It is they.”[B]

It is they!—is itthey indeed? There’s soul-stirring interest for you, all about your grand Baron Mavaracordo’s, who can’t speak even good grammar, and Italian gentlemen of astrological skill, who declare, that “if by the occult sciences that are familiar to them they can only find theknave who threw this here, he should suffer such pangs he dreams not of.”[C]

And, bless your heart, she hadn’t been in the house a week or so before, I declare to goodness, I don’t think there was a saucepan in the place that hadn’t its bottom burnt out; for there she would let, no matter what it was, boil and boil away till there wasn’t a drop of water left; for what didshecare about the fish or the potatoes so long as she could have a quiet half-hour’s cry over the “Black Pirate,” or else be finding out what became of “Mary, the Primrose Girl,” instead of looking after my greens. It’s a perfect miracle to me, too, that we were not all of us burnt in our beds; for when she found that I was one too many for her, and kept throwing her “Heiresses of Sackville” and her “Children of two Fathers” behind the fire as fast as she got them, then she must needs go reading in her room half the night through, and smuggling either “The Gipsy Boy,” or else “The Maniac Father,or the Victim of Seduction,” up to-bed with her of a night, robbing herself of her proper rest and me of my candles; and even when I took care to see that she had only an end just long enough to light her into bed, why then, drat her impudence, if the nasty toad didn’t burn all the kitchen stuff she could lay her hands upon in the butter-boat, with an old lamp wick stuck up in the middle.

How on earth the horrid silly could ever have managed to pay for all the works she took in out of the wages I allowed her, and what in the name of goodness she could ever have thought was to become of her in her old age, it would, I’m sure, take a much wiser head than mine to say; for independently of being a constant subscriber from the commencement to most of the penny novels, I declare nothing would please her stuck-up literary ladyship but she must needs take in a newspaper of her own every week, and be a constant reader of the “Penny Sunday Times,” though what to gracious she could have seen in the thing, I can’t make out. Positively, it used to make me shudder all over, and the blood run quite cold down my back, to see the large, staring, frightful engraving that there was always in the middle of itsfront page. For as true as each Saturday came round, there was sure to be some great brute of a man, in a Spanish hat and a large black cloak all flying about, striking some very grand theatrical attitude, and flourishing over his head a big carving-knife, to which three or four heavy notes of admiration were hanging, while a poor defenceless woman lay at his feet, with her throat cut as wide open as a cheese, and weltering in a pool of ink; and the beauty of it was, the thing always had some grand title, like “The Earl in his Jealous Rage slaying the Lady Isoline.”

Any one would naturally have fancied that the Penny Sunday Times and the novels at the same price would have been quite enough to have satisfied my lady’s love of the horrible; but, Lord bless you, no! I declare, there wasn’t a single murder or last dying speech and confession cried out in the streets, but she must rush up, all haste, to the door just to have another pen’orth of horrors; and then she would sit herself down, and never let the bit of paper go out of her hand until she had got the whole of the affecting copy of verses at the end of it by heart, and there I should have her marching about the house for weeks afterwards chanting some such nonsense as the following:—

“Biddle and Sheriff is our sad names,And do confess we were much to blame,On the 28th of September last,We well remember, alas! alas!The very thoughts causes us to rue,In Eighteen hundred and forty-two.”

I declare to goodness, there was no keeping the woman away from the door as soon as she heard those husky vagabonds in the street, shouting away at the top of their cracked post-horn voices, all at once, “The full, true, and particular account” of some cock-and-a-bull-story or other; and whether it was the “as-sas-si-nation of Lew-is Philip, the King of the French,” (I’m sure those screaming scoundrels used to assassinate that poor, dear old man at least two or three times a month in our neighbourhood all the winter through,) or whether it was the “full disclosures of an elopement of a certain pretty milliner, not a hundred miles from these parts, with a well-known sporting nobleman, together with authentic copiesof all the love-letters found in a silver cigar-case, which was picked up this morning by a respectable butcher in High-street,” or indeed no matter what it was, my Miss Betsy was sure to invest a penny in the rubbish, although directly I told her to let me see the nonsense that she had been stupid enough to go wasting her money about, of course, I used to find that it had nothing at all to do with what the fellows had been crying, and was merely some trumped-up rigmarole story, that would have done just as well for York as it did for Camden Town—a pack of wicked scoundrels coming up, three at a time, at the dusk of evening, alarming a quiet neighbourhood, and frightening one out of one’s wits by bawling their wicked stories out all of a sudden right under one’s window, and robbing the poor maids, who are sure to buy their rubbish, and imposing upon the mistresses, who are certain to read it.

As for the “new and popular songs,” too, it’s impossible to say how many miles of ballads that Betsy must have bought in her time, at three yards for a halfpenny. Positively, if the drawers in the dresser were not crammed with her “Cherry Ripes,” and her “Mistletoe Boughs,” and her “Old Arm Chairs,” and her “Cork Legs,” and a pack of other stuff, as full as they could hold, with the stupid engravings at the top of some of them, that had nothing at all to do with the song, for I declare if there wasn’t a ship in full sail put as an illustration to “Away, Away, to the Mountain’s Brow!” and a trumpery shepherdess, playing on a pipe to two grubby little lambs, as the picture of “Wanted! a Governess!”

However, to come back to my gooseberry pudding and my weaning. Well, thanks to that dear good mother of mine, I got the weaning all over so nicely the reader can’t tell, though, I’m sorry to say that, thanks to that beauty of a Betsy of mine, the gooseberry pudding with the wood in it, that I had set my heart upon having so, wasn’t fit to have been set before a pig, let alone a respectable married female like myself—Augh! I declare I’ve got the taste of it in my mouth to this very day.

Well, as I was saying, I went by myself round to dear, dear mother’s, (who, whatever her faults may be, stillI must say has always been a good mother to me,) and after we had had a nice long cry together, and both of us agreed that it was all owing to Mr. Sk—n—st—n’s continually trying, all he could, to set me against my own dear parents, as he was, we kissed each other and made friends again; for, as my darling mother very truly said, I had always been her own dear, good girl, and, she would add, whatever might come of it, (though, far be it from her to make words between man and wife,) that I was agreatdeal too good for that sour, good-for-nothing husband of mine, who, she couldn’t help saying, was no gentleman. Then the dear, foolish old soulwouldmake me step into the beautiful little back parlour and take a mouthful of luncheon. And then, I declare, shemustgo having up, expressly for me, the beautiful cold, baked rice-pudding that she’d had for dinner only the day before, and which, if it is well browned, and has got plenty of custard, and a stick or two of cinnamon in it, is to my mind as nice a thing as one can put one’s lips to. Nor, was this all. Really she seemed as if she couldn’t make enough of me, for, do what I would, I could not prevent the affectionate silly from opening a fresh bottle of her lovely, best green-ginger wine on the joyful occasion, for the more I told her that I dare not touch a drop of it for the life of me, the more determined she seemed to be to open it.

Oh! upon my word, I don’t think I ever passed such a pleasant afternoon as that was. I declare, as I sat there, looking out of that lovely little window, and seeing that superb Regent’s Canal winding along like a live eel, with father’s majestic barge dancing on its surface, and his gallant heaver fast asleep in the stern, while here and there a child of charity might be seen fishing on the banks, it seemed to me as if, with a slight stretch of the imagination, you might have fancied yourself to have been far away in beautiful Venice, and the swarthy bargeman the sun-burnt gondolier of that romantic clime, while with a little extra play of fancy one might easily have twisted the charity boys seeking the finny tribe into the yellow-legged kingfishers, which I have heard papa’s old friend, Mr. Glasscock, (who keeps a large Italian warehouse in the neighbourhood, and consequently ought to know something about the country,) over and over again say, delight to haunt the Venetian shores.

Oh! it was so beautiful to sit there, eating that heavenly cold baked rice-pudding till I was afraid I should make myself ill, and hearing dear mother call me everything that was good, and Mr. Sk—n—st—n everything that was bad. “Ah! my dear sweet Caroline,” she said, with much feeling and great truth, “how you can ever have brought yourself to put up with the brutal treatment of that disgraceful tyrant of a husband of yours,—of whose conduct I must beg of you, my darling, not to ask me to express any opinion,—is more than I should like to take upon myself to state. All I can say is, my love, that if you had not been a perfect angel, you would have packed up your things, and left the ungrateful monster long ago. But I can see what he is after, my dear; he wont rest easy until he has fidgetted you into an early grave; for I see as plainly as plainly can be, that you are fast giving way under it, and that your appetite is not half as good as it used to be, and that unless you take as much strengthening food as you possibly can, the wretch will break your heart chip by chip before he has done with you. However, it is no business of mine, and Heaven forbid that I should say a word about it! Only I wish to goodness gracious, with all my heart and soul, that it had pleased Providence to have allowed your father to have blessed you with a big brother, and then Mr. Sk—n—st—n would never have dared to have treated you in the way he does. But, as I said before, it is a subject which it pains me much to touch upon, so I shall let it drop, merely observing, that if your respected father had the spirit of a tadpole in him, he could never sit quietly smoking his pipe of an evening down at that filthy wharf as he does, while he knows, as well as I do, that a big-whiskered fellow is puzzling his wits to find out the quickest way of driving his own innocent, gentle little lamb of a Caroline into a premature coffin. But I have done with the painful theme, my pet; so let me give you a little more ginger, and we will change the conversation to a more lively theme, if you please. By-the-bye, will you, on your return home, remember to mention to that disgraceful husband of yours, that your dear father is now selling the very best screened Wall’s-end coals as low as twenty-one shillings a ton.”

Well, as I said before, I got the weaning over beautifully.Poor dear mother was delighted at having the job, though father—just like all the selfish men—was quite of a different way of thinking. Of course I kept away from the dear little pet for more than a whole week, though I’m sure I needn’t tell my fair readers that it was a hard, very hard struggle for me to do so, as I made certain that the darling was fretting its poor little life out for want of it. However, when I went to fetch the dear, mother told me that it had been as good as gold all the time, and had never cried once for it; for bless the little chick’s heart, it’s got its own mother’s sweet temper—so it has.

And upon my word, I had only just got my new nurse in, and my little toodle-loodle-lumpties (if I may be allowed so strong an expression) was only just beginning to take its food nicely, when, lo and behold, if that Easter Sunday didn’t pop round upon me! I never knew such a price as gooseberries were—three-and-sixpence for a little tiddy basketful, scarcely enough for one person; and Edward is such a pig at pastry, especially if it’s short crust; though I take good care always to make it flakey. However, it was a solemn feast; and if they had been twenty shillings a quart, I should have felt it my bounden duty to have given as much for them.

On the Saturday before Easter Sunday, I saw a little boy come to the door; and as Miss Betsy was up-stairs, busy with the beds, I went and opened it, when, bless us and save us, if it wasn’t a little dirty-faced monkey who had brought round her ladyship’s papers for the week from her twopenny-halfpenny newsvender. Oh, yes! there they were—“Penny Sunday Times,” as usual, with another horrible engraving; and the fifteenth part of “Emily Fitzormond,or the Deserted One;” together with the commencement of “Ela the Outcast,or the Gipsy Girl of Rosemary Dell;” with the first number of which Nos. 2, 3, and 4, were given gratis. Like a good-natured silly as I was, I went, letting her have the highly-exciting rubbish, instead of tearing it all up, as I ought to have done; and nicely I bit my fingers for my folly, for, just as I might have expected, there she was, all the next day, so interested with that stupid outcast of an Ela, that she couldn’t get my lamb down before thefire until it was so late, that when it came to table it was only just warmed through, and every one knows how nice underdone lamb is. However, said I to myself, thank goodness, there’s a good large pudding coming, or else I don’t know what I should do. But, Lord-a-mercy me! when that came up, I thought I should have died of disgust and vexation, for, drat the novel-reading blockhead, if she hadn’t been so taken up with the fate of that bothering fal-lal gipsy-girl of Rosemary Dell, indeed, that I declare, if she didn’t go beating up a nasty, filthy, bad French egg, in my beautiful expensive little green gooseberries, with the wood in them. As she had spoilt the lamb for me, of course I had made little or no dinner, and, let alone my being as hungry as a hunter, I was positively dying to taste my favourite pudding for the first time that year, so that it wasn’t until I had put a large dessert-spoonful into my mouth, that I found out what the minx had been doing. And then, Uch! oh la! of all the messes, I thought I should have fainted! Taken the roughness off, indeed—ay, that she had, with a vengeance. Upon my word I was so vexed, I could have set down and had a good cry, I could; but as it was, I merely said to the jade,—“I’ll make you pay soundly for this, you may depend upon it, Miss Betsy; for if I don’t have another gooseberry pudding out of your next quarter, my name isn’t what it is; and I can tell you this, my fine lady, that if you don’t mind your P’s and Q’s, you’ll find that those trumpery soul-thrilling novels of yours will bring you to a bad end some of these fine mornings, take my word for it.”

Oh! if I’d had my wits about me, and only been able to see my true interests, I should have had none of the stupid scruples of conscience that I had, and have got rid of the girl on the spot—only, thanks to Mr. Edward, he must have it that I was only happy when I was changing, when he knows that all I pray for is that I could get hold of some good, honest, hard-working maid, that would live and die in my service. As for Miss Betsy, she was quite a hopeless job. Upon my word she was so wrapt up in her works of fiction, that really she would believe any trumpery cock-and-a-bull story that was told her. There really was no trusting her out of my sight, and that’s the truth. Once I went outjust to get a mouthful of fresh air in the Park, and on my return found that the hall had been stripped, and the gold watch of Edward’s poor dear first wife, which he had given me before we were married, had been carried off the mantelpiece by a fellow, whom she would have was the clergyman of the parish, and who, she said, requested to be allowed to write a letter to me about the Easter offering. If, too, by any accident I let the key of the area-gate out of my possession for more than a minute, she was certain to have down in the kitchen the first gipsy woman, with her trumpery box of sewing cottons to sell, that she could lay hold of, just to tell her rubbishing fortune, and who, after stuffing her head that she saw by the lines in her great ugly, coarse hand, that she was to marry a certain black-eyed young baker, and was to have her nine children and a shay-cart, and promising her, moreover, a large fortune into the bargain, would be certain to wind up by walking off with my silver spoons. The beauty of it was, too, that when I used to rate the romantic idiot soundly for her disgusting simplicity, telling her that she ought to be whipped at the cart’s tail for encouraging a pack of thieves in the way she did, upon my word if she wouldn’t, with all the coolness in the world, go off lamenting the degraded state of the robbers of the present day, saying that they were not half the fine set of people that they used to be in “the good old times and days of yore;” and then she’d actually have the impudence to look me in the face, and ask me if I knew anything about the great Jack Sheppard, declaring that he was the robber for her money, for he never shed blood but once; and whatever his faults might have been, the book that had been written upon him said very beautifully that he never told a lie.

This was the secret of it all. Of course, with the high-flown notions she had got of robbers, and brigands, and pirates, and a pack of other pickpockets, out of her weekly pennyworths of romantic rodomontades; and believing that the vagabonds possessed every virtue under the sun, with merely the slight drawback of occasionally wanting either your money or your life, she was a common victim to every villain that chose to impose upon her. I declare she got meinto one scrape by her credulity that nearly proved the death of me, (though it wasn’t the one that I spoke of last month, and for which I sent her away.)

You see, summer was just coming on, and the fine weather had set in; so I went to work, looking up my light dresses; and it’s very lucky I did so, for there was scarcely any of them that were fit to put on. They were all as yellow as marigolds; so I packed them off to the wash, every one excepting a very nice clear muslin, which really was so slightly discoloured, that it seemed to me worse than a sin to go giving a matter of eightpence to have it washed, when with a nice dark shawl it would look nearly clean, and do very well for a walk round the park some fine day at the end of the week. When I saw my beautiful Swiss cambric again, with its sweet pretty little, bright-red flower upon it, and its rich skirt and four rows of deep flounces, I couldn’t for the life of me help saying to myself, “Oh, you are a perfect love, I declare! and when you’re nicely clear-starched you’ll look superb, with my pink drawn silk bonnet and green shot-silk scarf, next Sunday at church.” And the more I looked at it, the more it struck me that I might just as well coax my own dear Edward, the first evening he was in one of his merry humours, to consent to have a one-horse fly for half the day; and then after church we could go round and make a number of calls that I was positively dying to rub off, and afterwards take a drive round Hyde Park, and wind up with a promenade in Kensington Gardens. Nothing on earth would have given me greater pleasure than to have taken my darling good mother with me, as I knew it would do her so much good; but then she alwayswilldress so funny, and I felt convinced that, as matters stood, it would not be safe to trust the dear old soul with Edward a whole afternoon in a shut-up fly, or they would be certain to get to high words again, and then I should never forgive myself.

Well, on the Monday, off I packed my dresses, with the dirty linen, to the wash, and gave the woman a whole string of directions as to how I wanted them done. When the Saturday came, I declare it was such a fine warm day, that I slipped on the clear muslin that I had kept back, and went out in the afternoon to pay the last week’s bills; and while Iwas in the neighbourhood, I thought I might just as well run round to Mrs. L—ckl—y’s, and ask that sweet woman to take a walk down Oxford-street with me and look at the shops; for, to tell the truth, I felt that I wanted a mouthful of fresh air. So off Mrs. L—ckl—y and I set together; and though there was not so much as a goat’s hair or a mare’s tail to be seen in the sky when we started, of course, as usual, we had no sooner set foot in Regent-street than it began to spit a bit. However, as we thought it would not last, and we didn’t see the fun of spoiling our bonnets, why we both of us agreed that it would be best to step into Hodge and Lowman’s, and just look at a few things that we didn’t want, until it had given over. But, oh dear, no! nothing of the kind; for though we must have stopped there, I should say, a good half-hour, pulling the things over, and having first this dress out of the window, and then that, until we put the poor man to such trouble, that Mrs. L—ckl—y whispered to me that she really thought that she must buy a yard or two of sarsnet ribbon, just for the look of the thing; it really seemed as if the fates had conspired against my clear muslin, for, upon my word, it only kept getting worse and worse, and came down at last in such straight lines, that it really looked as if it was raining iron wires. So, as it was getting close to dinner time, and I thought Edward would be coming home and fidgetting again about the place for want of his dinner, I told Mrs. L—ckl—y, that, since a cab up to her house, in Albany-street, would come to the same money as the bus, why it would be much better to take one, instead of having a parcel of wet umbrellas stuck right against one’s knees, and the dirty boots of those filthy men wiped right on the flounces of one’s dress—especially, too, as I knew Mrs. L—ckl—y had too much of the lady in her ever to be mean enough to accept of my trumpery sixpence towards such a trifle as the shilling fare. Accordingly, we jumped into the first cab we could catch, and on the road I made up my mind pretty quickly not to go taking the thing on to P—rk V—ll—ge, for I saw, as plain as the nose on my face, that I should have the whole fare to pay if I did, for, of course it would look just as bad for me to accept of her beggarly sixpence as it would for her ever to think of taking mine. Whenthe cab stopped at Mrs. L—ckl—y’s, I told her I would step in and arrange my hair just for a minute, and of course, I couldn’t do less thanofferto pay the fare, never for an instant fancying that she would be stingy enough to take advantage of my generosity; but, like a stupid, I must go overdoing it, for the more she kept refusing, the more I kept pressing, and when she protested “she wouldn’t listen to such a thing for a moment,” I (just for the look of the thing) directly declared that I would insist upon doing it, whereupon, drat it, if her ladyship wasn’t shabby enough to say, “Well, then, if youinsistupon it, my dear, I suppose I must give way,” and scampered off into the house, leaving me with that shameful impostor of a cabman, who wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than eighteenpence. Augh! it isn’t the trumpery one-and-sixpence that I grumble about, but the nasty mean spirit in which I was left to pay it. Thank goodness,Icouldn’t be guilty of such meanness—no, not if I was to die for it to-morrow; but then, you know, some people are so different to others.

Well, after I had sat for a minute, twiddling my thumbs in Mrs. L—ckl—y’s front parlour, I said, that as it seemed to be holding up a little, I thought that if she would be kind enough to lend me an umbrella, I should be able to get as far as our house without much inconvenience. So I had my umbrella, and off I started; but then, bother take the thing! it was one of those thin wiry Germans, with ribs no thicker than bodkins, and as the wind was rather high, I declare if, at the very first turning I came to, the trumpery bit of goods didn’t turn right inside out, and do what I would, I could neither get it down nor back again into its proper shape, and there was I obliged to go stalking all up Albany-street, holding up the inverted thing, looking like a great big funnel, and which, instead of keeping the rain off me, of course only served to collect all the water over my head like a cistern, which, being full of holes, of course it let through again, just like a shower-bath, and while I kept continually looking up to see where the dickens all the water that was pouring down upon me could come from, I kept stepping into all kinds of puddles, right up to the cotton tops of my white silk stockings, so that by the time I got home, I was positively soaking, andall my hair and things hung about me, for all the world like the feathers of the cocks and hens on a rainy day.

As soon as I got up-stairs in the bed-room, I rang for Betsy, and asked her if they’d brought the clean things home from the wash, for I thought I’d better put on my clean morning wrapper.

“Oh, yes, mum,” she answered; “they brought them an hour or two ago.”

“Then just bring them up-stairs to me, there’s a good girl,” I replied.

“If you please, mum,” she returned, “a man called immediately after they’d brought them, and said that the wrong basket had been left by mistake, and took it away, saying he would bring ours in a minute or two.”

“And do you mean to stand there, woman, and tell me that you were simpleton enough to give it?” I continued, as the whole truth flashed upon me; for mother had had the very same wicked trick played off upon her, and had cautioned me against it herself.

“Yes, mum, I did,” she answered, quite coolly, “and he’s never been back since.”

“Of course he hasn’t,” I shrieked out, “and never will you set eyes upon him, or my clean linen again. Oh! you good-for-nothing, shameful, novel-reading, story-believing hussy. Now, see what your highly exciting romances have led you to do. Here am I, who have always been the best of mistresses to you, wet to the skin, and without a clean morning wrapper to put on, nor even so much as a dress fit to go to church in to-morrow, to say nothing of the two pairs of beautiful linen sheets that you’ve wilfully lost for me, and the very white trousers that my husband was married in, and which I wouldn’t have parted with for untold gold. There, go down stairs and hide your face, and think how you’ll relish it when you have to pay for it, and find, as you most assuredly will, that you haven’t got a penny to receive at the end of the year.”

However, it was useless fretting; there were three of as beautiful summer dresses as ever were made, and the beautiful afternoon’s ride I had promised myself after church on the morrow, all gone; for my sweet pretty Swiss cambric wasamong the number, and I could never think of walking in Kensington Gardens in that grubby, seedy, hot, plaid thing, that I had worn all the winter through. As I said before, it was useless fretting, so I changed from top to toe, and put on some of the things I had taken off during the week, which, to say the least, were dry; and, as I wasn’t in the humour to care a pin how I looked, why, I popped on my flannel dressing-gown, for, to tell the truth, I felt rather chilly, and Mr. Edward might tell me, for the hundredth time, that I looked like an old watchman in it, as much as he pleased, for what I cared.

At dinner, just as we were taking cheese, there came that plaguy Saturday night ring at our area-bell, and I could have staked my existence that it was that dirty-faced young monkey of a boy again, bringing Miss Betsy another pen’orth of her precious “Emily Fitzormond,” and the fifth part of that bothering, vagabond “outcast” of an “Ela.”

It was as much as I could do to prevent myself from jumping off my seat, and rushing down stairs, and tearing the whole of the high-flown fustian out of the hussy’s hand, just as she was enjoying that “Sunday Times” picture, as I knew she was. But, luckily for her, I felt far from myself, for I was as sure as sure could be that I had caught such a cold as would play old gooseberry with me,—if I might be allowed so strong an expression,—and I didn’t take it in time.

Nor was I wrong, for scarcely was the dinner cleared away, than on came the shivers, just as I expected, and I kept going hot and cold by turns, and I declare all my joints ached so, that as I walked across the room, I felt as if I could have fallen down and gone all to pieces, just like the dancing skeleton in the Fantoccini, while my poor old knees began to shoot away as if some one was digging a carving-fork into them; and my wretched back was as cold as though a person was amusing himself by pouring buckets of spring-water right down between my shoulders; and though I put on all the shawls and cloaks I had got in the house, and sat with my nose right in the fire, (if I may be allowed the phrase,) still I could not get warm. When I complained to Mr. Edward of how ill I felt, he onlyanswered, “The fact is, my dear, you’ve caught a violent cold,” (as if I didn’t know that as well as he did, the brute,) “and the sooner you get yourself up-stairs to bed the better; and if you follow my advice, you’d have it warmed first, and take a good large basinful of gruel, with a James’s powder, for supper.”

“Gruel and James’s powder, indeed!” I replied, with much sarcasm; “you wont gruel and James’s powder me, I can tell you, sir;—as ifIdidn’t know what’s good for a cold;—a glass of hot rum-and-water, with a bit of butter, the size of a walnut; and that’s whatIcall good for a cold.”

“For goodness’ sake mind, my love, and tallow your nose as well,” returned Mr. Knowall.

“Yes, Mr. Edward,” I replied, “Ishalltallow my nose as well, and tie my flannel petticoat round my head into the bargain—that’s what I shall do.”

“And a lot of good it’ll do you,” he answered. “A pack of old woman’s rubbish.”

“You call it old woman’s rubbish, do you?—then I don’t,” I continued, with my customary satire. “I call it an excellent remedy—that’s what I call it.”

“But how can the tallow on your nose do you any good, I should like to know!” he returned.

“You’d like to know?” I said, in my bitterest way—“I dare say you would, but I’m not going to tell you.”

“Yes; but why is it an excellent remedy?” he inquired, grinning in a way I didn’t half like.

“Because it is,” I replied, with my usual argument.

“Yes; but what on earth do you use it for?” he continued.

“Because I do,” I answered, determined to have the best of it.

As I wasn’t going to stop there wasting my argumentative powers upon a man who was deaf to reason, I put an end to his sneers by ringing the bell for that Betsy, and told her to get some boiling water ready as soon as she could, for I wanted to have my bed warmed, and to be sure and stand the warming-pan near the fire for a few minutes before putting the water in it, so that I might have it as hot as I could. We always used one of the new patent hot-waterwarming-pans, because with them one hasn’t that nasty coal-gassy smell that the old-fashioned things invariably leave behind them; and there’s no chance—even if the pan’s left to stand a moment in the bed—of having one’s best linen sheets scorched, and with large brown marks upon them as if they were stuck over with pancakes.

I thought my lady was taking her time nicely to boil a trumpery kettle full of water. So, even ill as I was, I couldn’t help just slipping quietly down stairs, and popping in upon her when she least expected me. Hoity-toity! was there ever such a sight!—I thought I should have dropped down when I saw it. My beautiful kitchen for all the world like a cheap Jack’s cart at a fair—saucepans here, kettles there, crockery everywhere, while my beauty was sitting with her toes cocked up on the fender, and that trumpery “Gipsy Girl of Rosemary Dell” in her hand, as I live, and crying water-spouts over that stupid, disgusting “Outcast” of an “Ela.” There was our cat, too, right in the frying-pan, and the house flannel and the scrubbing-brush in the fish-kettle, and that precious “Emily Fitzormond,or the Deserted One,” lying on the ground, with the “Ranger of the Tomb” by her side, and “Fatherless Fanny, or theMysteriousOrphan,” as the thing was called, all over grease, and without even so much as a wrapper to its back, pitched about anywhere. There were all the dirty plates and dishes besides, just as they had come down from dinner more than an hour ago, side by side with the breakfast things, which she had got to wash up before we could have even a mouthful of tea; and although it was nearly dark, I declare she hadn’t so much as cleaned a single candlestick all the day through, for they were standing on the hob with all the hot tallow running out of them, and dripping into one of my best new block-tin saucepans. As I’m a Christian, drat the woman, if she hadn’t stuck my beautiful bright copper warming-pan, too, (that hadn’t been used more than twice, and which I picked up, quite a bargain, at a broker’s only a year ago,) right on the top of the oven, and so close to the fire, that, upon my word, when I went to take hold of it, it was nearly red hot, while of course her head was so full of her romantic rubbish, that she hadn’t so much as thought about the hot water; for,

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