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Page 2
Girls as I was beginning to remark are one of your first and your lasting
troubles, being like your teeth which begin with convulsions and never
cease tormenting you from the time you cut them till they cut you, and
then you don't want to part with them which seems hard but we must all
succumb or buy artificial, and even where you get a will nine times out
of ten you'll get a dirty face with it and naturally lodgers do not like
good society to be shown in with a smear of black across the nose or a
smudgy eyebrow. Where they pick the black up is a mystery I cannot
solve, as in the case of the willingest girl that ever came into a house
half-starved poor thing, a girl so willing that I called her Willing
Sophy down upon her knees scrubbing early and late and ever cheerful but
always smiling with a black face. And I says to Sophy, "Now Sophy my
good girl have a regular day for your stoves and keep the width of the
Airy between yourself and the blacking and do not brush your hair with
the bottoms of the saucepans and do not meddle with the snuffs of the
candles and it stands to reason that it can no longer be" yet there it
was and always on her nose, which turning up and being broad at the end
seemed to boast of it and caused warning from a steady gentleman and
excellent lodger with breakfast by the week but a little irritable and
use of a sitting-room when required, his words being "Mrs. Lirriper I
have arrived at the point of admitting that the Black is a man and a
brother, but only in a natural form and when it can't be got off." Well
consequently I put poor Sophy on to other work and forbid her answering
the door or answering a bell on any account but she was so unfortunately
willing that nothing would stop her flying up the kitchen-stairs whenever
a bell was heard to tingle. I put it to her "O Sophy Sophy for goodness'
goodness' sake where does it come from?" To which that poor unlucky
willing mortal--bursting out crying to see me so vexed replied "I took a
deal of black into me ma'am when I was a small child being much neglected
and I think it must be, that it works out," so it continuing to work out
of that poor thing and not having another fault to find with her I says
"Sophy what do you seriously think of my helping you away to New South
Wales where it might not be noticed?" Nor did I ever repent the money
which was well spent, for she married the ship's cook on the voyage
(himself a Mulotter) and did well and lived happy, and so far as ever I
heard it was _not_ noticed in a new state of society to her dying day.
In what way Miss Wozenham lower down on the other side of the way
reconciled it to her feelings as a lady (which she is not) to entice Mary
Anne Perkinsop from my service is best known to herself, I do not know
and I do not wish to know how opinions are formed at Wozenham's on any
point. But Mary Anne Perkinsop although I behaved handsomely to her and
she behaved unhandsomely to me was worth her weight in gold as overawing
lodgers without driving them away, for lodgers would be far more sparing
of their bells with Mary Anne than I ever knew them to be with Maid or
Mistress, which is a great triumph especially when accompanied with a
cast in the eye and a bag of bones, but it was the steadiness of her way
with them through her father's having failed in Pork. It was Mary Anne's
looking so respectable in her person and being so strict in her spirits
that conquered the tea-and-sugarest gentleman (for he weighed them both
in a pair of scales every morning) that I have ever had to deal with and
no lamb grew meeker, still it afterwards came round to me that Miss
Wozenham happening to pass and seeing Mary Anne take in the milk of a
milkman that made free in a rosy-faced way (I think no worse of him) with
every girl in the street but was quite frozen up like the statue at
Charing-cross by her, saw Mary Anne's value in the lodging business and
went as high as one pound per quarter more, consequently Mary Anne with
not a word betwixt us says "If you will provide yourself Mrs. Lirriper in
a month from this day I have already done the same," which hurt me and I
said so, and she then hurt me more by insinuating that her father having
failed in Pork had laid her open to it.
My dear I do assure you it's a harassing thing to know what kind of girls
to give the preference to, for if they are lively they get bell'd off
their legs and if they are sluggish you suffer from it yourself in
complaints and if they are sparkling-eyed they get made love to, and if
they are smart in their persons they try on your Lodgers' bonnets and if
they are musical I defy you to keep them away from bands and organs, and
allowing for any difference you like in their heads their heads will be
always out of window just the same. And then what the gentlemen like in
girls the ladies don't, which is fruitful hot water for all parties, and
then there's temper though such a temper as Caroline Maxey's I hope not
often. A good-looking black-eyed girl was Caroline and a comely-made
girl to your cost when she did break out and laid about her, as took
place first and last through a new-married couple come to see London in
the first floor and the lady very high and it _was_ supposed not liking
the good looks of Caroline having none of her own to spare, but anyhow
she did try Caroline though that was no excuse. So one afternoon
Caroline comes down into the kitchen flushed and flashing, and she says
to me "Mrs. Lirriper that woman in the first has aggravated me past
bearing," I says "Caroline keep your temper," Caroline says with a
curdling laugh "Keep my temper? You're right Mrs. Lirriper, so I will.
Capital D her!" bursts out Caroline (you might have struck me into the
centre of the earth with a feather when she said it) "I'll give her a
touch of the temper that _I_ keep!" Caroline downs with her hair my
dear, screeches and rushes up-stairs, I following as fast as my trembling
legs could bear me, but before I got into the room the dinner-cloth and
pink-and-white service all dragged off upon the floor with a crash and
the new-married couple on their backs in the firegrate, him with the
shovel and tongs and a dish of cucumber across him and a mercy it was
summer-time. "Caroline" I says "be calm," but she catches off my cap and
tears it in her teeth as she passes me, then pounces on the new-married
lady makes her a bundle of ribbons takes her by the two ears and knocks
the back of her head upon the carpet Murder screaming all the time
Policemen running down the street and Wozenham's windows (judge of my
feelings when I came to know it) thrown up and Miss Wozenham calling out
from the balcony with crocodile's tears "It's Mrs. Lirriper been
overcharging somebody to madness--she'll be murdered--I always thought
so--Pleeseman save her!" My dear four of them and Caroline behind the
chiffoniere attacking with the poker and when disarmed prize-fighting
with her double fists, and down and up and up and down and dreadful! But
I couldn't bear to see the poor young creature roughly handled and her
hair torn when they got the better of her, and I says "Gentlemen
Policemen pray remember that her sex is the sex of your mothers and
sisters and your sweethearts, and God bless them and you!" And there she
was sitting down on the ground handcuffed, taking breath against the
skirting-board and them cool with their coats in strips, and all she says
was "Mrs. Lirriper I'm sorry as ever I touched you, for you're a kind
motherly old thing," and it made me think that I had often wished I had
been a mother indeed and how would my heart have felt if I had been the
mother of that girl! Well you know it turned out at the Police-office
that she had done it before, and she had her clothes away and was sent to
prison, and when she was to come out I trotted off to the gate in the
evening with just a morsel of jelly in that little basket of mine to give
her a mite of strength to face the world again, and there I met with a
very decent mother waiting for her son through bad company and a stubborn
one he was with his half-boots not laced. So out came Caroline and I
says "Caroline come along with me and sit down under the wall where it's
retired and eat a little trifle that I have brought with me to do you
good," and she throws her arms round my neck and says sobbing "O why were
you never a mother when there are such mothers as there are!" she says,
and in half a minute more she begins to laugh and says "Did I really tear
your cap to shreds?" and when I told her "You certainly did so Caroline"
she laughed again and said while she patted my face "Then why do you wear
such queer old caps you dear old thing? if you hadn't worn such queer old
caps I don't think I should have done it even then." Fancy the girl!
Nothing could get out of her what she was going to do except O she would
do well enough, and we parted she being very thankful and kissing my
hands, and I nevermore saw or heard of that girl, except that I shall
always believe that a very genteel cap which was brought anonymous to me
one Saturday night in an oilskin basket by a most impertinent young
sparrow of a monkey whistling with dirty shoes on the clean steps and
playing the harp on the Airy railings with a hoop-stick came from
Caroline.
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