Page:Mrs Caudle's curtain lectures.djvu/170

 134 and smoke a cigar, when you knew I should be ill—oh, you knew it; for I always am. The brutal way, too, in which you took that cold brandy-and-water—you thought I didn't see you; but ill as I was, hardly able to hold my head up, I was watching you all the time. Three glasses of cold brandy-and-water; and you sipped 'em, and drank the health of people who you didn't care a pin about; whilst the health of your own lawful wife was nothing. Three glasses of brandy-and-water, and I left—as I may say—alone! You didn't hear 'em, but everybody was crying shame of you.

"What do you say?

"A good deal my own fault? I took too much dinner?

"Well, you are a man! If I took more than the breast and leg of that young goose—a thing, I may say, just out of the shell—with the slightest bit of stuffing, I'm a wicked woman. What do you say?

"Lobster salad?

"La!—how can you speak of it? A month-old baby would have eaten more. What?

"Gooseberry pie?

"Well, if you'll name that you'll name anything. Ate too much indeed! Do you think I was going to pay for a dinner, and eat nothing? No, Mr. Caudle; it's a good thing for you that I know a little more of the value of money than that.

"But, of course, you were better engaged than in attending to me. Mr. Prettyman came on board at Gravesend. A planned thing, of course. You think I didn't see him give you a letter.

"It wasn't a letter; it was a newspaper?

"I daresay; ill as I was, I had my eyes. It was the smallest newspaper I ever saw, that's all. But of course,