Page:Mrs Caudle's curtain lectures.djvu/171

 Rh a letter from Miss Prettyman—— Now, Caudle, if you begin to cry out in that manner, I'll get up. Do you forget that you are not at your own house? making that noise! Disturbing everybody! Why, we shall have the landlord up! And you could smoke and drink 'forward,' as you called it. What?

"You couldn't smoke anywhere else?

"That's nothing to do with it. Yes; forward. What a pity that Miss Prettyman wasn't with you! I'm sure nothing could be too forward for her. No, I won't hold my tongue; and I ought not to be ashamed of myself. It isn't treason, is it, to speak of Miss Prettyman? After all I've suffered to-day, and I'm not to open my lips! Yes; I'm to be brought away from my own home, dragged down here to the sea-side, and made ill! and I'm not to speak. I should like to know what next.

"It's a mercy some of the dear children were not drowned; not that their father would have cared, so long as he could have had his brandy and cigars. Peter was as near through one of the holes as——

"It's no such thing?

"It's very well for you to say so, but you know what an inquisitive boy he is, and how he likes to wander among steam-engines. No, I won't let you sleep. What a man you are! What?

"I've said that before?

"That's no matter; I'll say it again. Go to sleep, indeed! as if one could never have a little rational conversation. No, I sha'n't be too late for the Margate boat in the morning; I can wake up at what hour I like, and you ought to know that by this time.

"A miserable creature they must have thought me in