Page:Mrs Caudle's curtain lectures.djvu/136

 100 words. Suffer for it. But you suppose I have no feelings: oh no, nobody has feelings but yourself. Yes; I'd forgot: Miss Prettyman, perhaps—yes, she may have feelings, of course.

"And as I've said, I dare say a pretty dupe people think me. To be sure; a poor forlorn creature I must look in everybody's eyes. But I knew you couldn't be at Mr. Prettyman's house night after night till eleven o'clock—and a great deal you thought of me sitting up for you—I knew you couldn't be there without some cause. And now I've found it out! Oh, I don't mind your swearing, Mr. Caudle! It's I, if I wasn't a woman, who ought to swear. But it's like you men. Lords of the creation, as you call yourselves! Lords, indeed! And pretty slaves you make of the poor creatures who're tied to you. But I'll be separated, Caudle; I will; and then I'll take care and let all the world know how you've used me. What do you say?

"I may say my worst?

"Ha! don't you tempt any woman in that way—don't, Caudle; for I wouldn't answer for what I said.

"Miss Prettyman, indeed, and—oh yes! now I see! Now the whole light breaks in upon me! Now I know why you wished me to ask her with Mr. and Mrs. Prettyman to tea! And I, like a poor blind fool, was nearly doing it. But now, as I say, my eyes are open! And you'd have brought her under my own roof—now it's no use your bouncing about in that fashion—you'd have brought her into the very house, where——"

"Here," says Caudle, "I could endure it no longer. So I jumped out of bed, and went and slept somehow with the children."