Page:Mrs Caudle's curtain lectures.djvu/168

 132 But catch you stirring! Oh, no! You'd let me lie here and be robbed and killed, for what you'd care. Why you're not going to sleep? What do you say?

"It's the strange air—and you're always sleepy in a strange air?

"That shows the feelings you have, after what I've gone through. And yawning, too, in that brutal manner! Caudle, you've no more heart than that wooden figure in a white petticoat at the front of the ship.

"No; I couldn't leave my temper at home. I dare say! Because for once in your life you've brought me out—yes, I say once, or two or three times, it isn't more; because, as I say, you once bring me out, I'm to be a slave and say nothing. Pleasure, indeed! A great deal of pleasure I'm to have, if I'm told to hold my tongue. A nice way that of pleasing a woman.

"Dear me! if the bed doesn't spin round and dance about! I've got all that filthy ship in my head! No: I sha'n't be well in the morning. But nothing ever ails anybody but yourself. You needn't groan in that way, Mr. Caudle, disturbing the people, perhaps, in the next room. It's a mercy I'm alive, I'm sure. If once I wouldn't have given all the world for anybody to have thrown me overboard! What are you smacking your lips at, Mr. Caudle? But I know what you mean—of course, you'd never have stirred to stop 'em; not you. And then you might have known that the wind would have blown to-day; but that's why you came.

"Whatever I should have done if it hadn't been for that good soul—that blessed Captain Large! I'm sure all the women who go to Margate ought to pray for him; so attentive in sea-sickness, and so much of a gentleman! How I should have got down stairs without