Page:Mrs Caudle's curtain lectures.djvu/159

 Rh notions; you say that everybody works too much: I know that. You'd have all the world do nothing half its time but twiddle its thumbs, or walk in the parks, or go to picture-galleries, and museums, and such nonsense. Very fine, indeed; but, thank goodness! the world isn't come to that pass yet.

"What do you say I am, Mr. Caudle?

"A foolish woman, that can't look beyond my own fireside?

"Oh yes, I can; quite as far as you, and a great deal farther. But I can't go out shopping a little with my dear friend Mrs. Wittles—what do you laugh at? Oh, don't they? Don't women know what friendship is? Upon my life, you've a nice opinion of us! Oh yes, we can—we can look outside of our own fenders, Mr. Caudle. And if we can't, it's all the better for our families. A blessed thing it would be for their wives and children if men couldn't either. You wouldn't have lent that five pounds—and I dare say a good many other five pounds that I know nothing of—if you—a lord of the creation!—had half the sense women have. You seldom catch us, I believe, lending five pounds. I should think not.

"No: we won't talk of it to-morrow morning. You're not going to wound my feelings when I come home, and think I'm to say nothing about it. You have called me an inhuman person; you have said I have no thought, no feeling for the health and comfort of my fellow-creatures; I don't know what you haven't called me; and only for buying a—but I sha'n't tell you what; no, I won't satisfy you there-but you've abused me in this manner, and only for shopping up to ten o'clock. You've a great deal of fine compassion, you have! I'm sure the young man that served me could have knocked down an