Page:Mrs Caudle's curtain lectures.djvu/147

 Rh the mother of your children,—but you'll not make me cry to-night, I can tell you—I was going to say that—oh! you're such an aggravating man I don't know what I was going to say!

"Thank Heaven?

"What for? I don't see that there's anything to thank Heaven about! I was going to say, I know the trick of public dinners. They get a lord, or a duke, if they can catch him—anything to make people say they dined with nobility, that's it—yes, they get one of these people, with a star perhaps in his coat, to take the chair—and to talk all sorts of sugar-plum things about charity—and to make foolish men, with wine in 'em, feel that they've no end of money; and then—shutting their eyes to their wives and families at home—all the while that their own faces are red and flushed like poppies, and they think to-morrow will never come—then they get 'em to put their hand to paper. Then they make 'em pull out their cheques. But I took your book, Mr. Caudle—you couldn't do it a second time. What are you laughing at?

"Nothing?

"It's no matter: I shall see it in the paper to-morrow; for if you gave anything, you were too proud to hide it. I know your charity.

"Where's your watch?

"Haven't I told you fifty times where it is? In the pocket—over your head—of course. Can't you hear it tick? No: you can hear nothing to-night.

"And now, Mr. Caudle, I should like to know whose hat you've brought home? You went out with a beaver worth three-and-twenty shillings—the second time you've worn it—and you bring home a thing that no Jew in his senses would give me fivepence for. I