Page:Mrs Caudle's curtain lectures.djvu/185

 Rh "Why not,—do you think I'd encourage people of that sort?

"What do you say?

"Good-night?

"It's no use your saying that—I can't go to sleep so soon as you can. Especially with a door that has such a lock as that to it. How do we know who may come in? What?

"All the locks are bad in France?

"The more shame for you to bring me to such a place, then. It only shows how you value me.

"Well, I dare say you are tired. I am! But then, see what I've gone through. Well, we won't quarrel in a barbarous country. We won't do that. Caudle, dear,—what's the French for lace? I know it, only I forget it. The French for lace, love? What?

"Dentelle?

"Now, you're not deceiving me?

"You never deceived me yet?

"Oh! don't say that. There isn't a married man in this blessed world can put his hand upon his heart in bed and say that. French for lace, dear? Say it again.

"Dentelle?

"Ha! Dentelle! Good-night, dear. Dentelle! Den—telle."

"I afterwards," writes Caudle, "found out to my cost wherefore she inquired about lace. For she went out in the morning with the landlady to buy a veil, giving only four pounds for what she could have bought in England for forty shillings!"