Page:Mrs Caudle's curtain lectures.djvu/118

 82 "I wish that Prettyman had been at the bottom of the sea before—what?

"It isn't Prettyman?

"Ah! it's very well for you to say so; but I know it is; it's just like him. He looks like a man that's always in debt—that's always in a sponging-house. Anybody might swear it. I knew it from the very first time you brought him here—from the very night he put his nasty dirty wet boots on my bright steel fender. Any woman could see what the fellow was in a minute. Prettyman! a pretty gentleman, truly, to be robbing your wife and family!

"Why couldn't you let him stop in the sponging—Now don't call upon heaven in that way, and ask me to be quiet, for I won't. Why couldn't you let him stop there? He got himself in; he might have got himself out again. And you must keep me awake, ruin my sleep, my health, and for what you care, my peace of mind. Ha! everybody but you can see how I'm breaking. You can do all this while you're talking with a set of low bailiffs! A great deal you must think of your children to go into a lawyer's office.

"And then you must be bail—you must be bound—for Mr. Prettyman! You may say, bound! Yes—you've your hands nicely tied, now. How he laughs at you—and serve you right! Why, in another week he'll be in the East Indies; of course he will! And you'll have to pay his debts; yes, your children may go in rags, so that Mr. Prettyman—what do you say?

"It isn't Prettyman?

"I know better. Well, if it isn't Prettyman that's kept you out,—if it isn't Prettyman you're bail for—who is it, then? I ask, who is it, then? What?