Page:Stubbs's Calendar or The Fatal Boots.djvu/122

106 room. Lizzy had a pretty genius for work, and earned a guinea a week that way; so that we had got nearly two hundred a year over the rent to keep house with,—and we got on pretty well. Besides, women eat nothing; my women didn't care for meat for days together sometimes,—so that it was only necessary to dress a good steak or so for me.

Mamma would not think of my continuing in the Post Office. She said her dear JohnBob [sic], her husband's son, her gallant soldier, and all that, should remain at home and be a gentleman—which I was, certainly, though I didn't find fifty pounds a year very much to buy clothes and be a gentleman upon; to be sure, mother found me shirts and linen, so that that wasn't in the fifty pounds. She kicked a little at paying the washing too; but she gave in at last, for I was her dear John, you know; and I'm blest if I could not make her give me the gown off her back. Fancy! once she cut up a very nice rich black silk scarf, which my sister Waters sent her, and made me a waistcoat and two stocks of it. She was so very soft, the old lady!