Page:Mrs Caudle's curtain lectures.djvu/164

 128 "What?

"Don't?

"Ha! that's your ingratitude! But none of you men deserve that any woman should love you. My poor heart!

"Everybody else can go out of town except us. Ha! If I'd only married Simmons—— What?

"Why didn't I?

"Yes, that's all the thanks I get.

"Who's Simmons?

"Oh, you know very well who Simmons is. He'd have treated me a little better, I think. He was a gentleman.

"You can't tell?

"May be not: but I can. With such weather as this, to stay melting in London; and when the painters are coming in!

"You won't have the painters in?

"But you must; and if they once come in, I'm determined that none of us shall stir then. Painting in July, with a family in the house! We shall all be poisoned, of course; but what do you care for that?

"Why can't I tell you what it will cost?

"How can I or any woman tell exactly what it will cost? Of course lodgings—and at Margate, too—are a little dearer than living at your own house.

"Pooh! You know that?

"Well, if you did, Mr. Caudle, I suppose there's no treason in naming it. Still, if you take 'em for two months, they're cheaper than for one. No, Mr. Caudle, I shall not be quite tired of it in one month. No: and it isn't true that I no sooner get out than I want to get home again. To be sure, I was tired of Margate three