Page:Mrs Caudle's curtain lectures.djvu/150

 114 happiness, and—What? No, Mr. Caudle, don't say that; I have not wiped the butter off—not I. If you above all men are not happy, you ought to be, gracious knows!

"Yes, I will talk of fourteen years ago. Ha! you sat beside me then, and picked out all sorts of nice things for me. You'd have given me pearls and diamonds to eat if I could have swallowed 'em. Yes, I say, you sat beside me, and—What do you talk about?

"You couldn't sit beside me to-day?

"That's nothing at all to do with it. But it's so like you. I can't speak but you fly off to something else. Ha! and when the health of the young couple was drunk, what a speech you made then! It was delicious! How you made everybody cry as if their hearts were breaking; and I recollect it as if it was yesterday, how the tears ran down dear father's nose, and how dear mother nearly went into a fit! Dear souls! They little thought, with all your fine talk, how you'd use me.

"How have you used me?

"Oh, Mr. Caudle, how can you ask that question? It's well for you I can't see you blush. How have you used me?

"Well, that the same tongue could make a speech like that, and then talk as it did to-day!

"How did you talk?

"Why, shamefully! What did you say about your wedded happiness? Why, nothing. What did you say about your wife? Worse than nothing: just as if she were a bargain you were sorry for, but were obliged to make the best of. What do you say?

"And bad's the best?

"If you say that again, Caudle, I'll rise from my bed.