‘Now for supper! What are you thinking
of, Jenny darling?’
‘I was thinking,’ she returned, coming
out of a deep study, ’what I would do to Him,
if he should turn out a drunkard.’
‘Oh, but he won’t,’ said Lizzie.
‘You’ll take care of that, beforehand.’
’I shall try to take care of it beforehand,
but he might deceive me. Oh, my dear, all those
fellows with their tricks and their manners do deceive!’
With the little fist in full action. ’And
if so, I tell you what I think I’d do.
When he was asleep, I’d make a spoon red hot,
and I’d have some boiling liquor bubbling in
a saucepan, and I’d take it out hissing, and
I’d open his mouth with the other hand—or
perhaps he’d sleep with his mouth ready open—and
I’d pour it down his throat, and blister it
and choke him.’
‘I am sure you would do no such horrible thing,’
said Lizzie.
‘Shouldn’t I? Well; perhaps I shouldn’t.
But I should like to!’
‘I am equally sure you would not.’
’Not even like to? Well, you generally
know best. Only you haven’t always lived
among it as I have lived—and your back isn’t
bad and your legs are not queer.’
As they went on with their supper, Lizzie tried to
bring her round to that prettier and better state.
But, the charm was broken. The person of the
house was the person of a house full of sordid shames
and cares, with an upper room in which that abased
figure was infecting even innocent sleep with sensual
brutality and degradation. The doll’s dressmaker
had become a little quaint shrew; of the world, worldly;
of the earth, earthy.
Poor doll’s dressmaker! How often so dragged
down by hands that should have raised her up; how
often so misdirected when losing her way on the eternal
road, and asking guidance! Poor, poor little doll’s
dressmaker!
A PIECE OF WORK
Britannia, sitting meditating one fine day (perhaps
in the attitude in which she is presented on the copper
coinage), discovers all of a sudden that she wants
Veneering in Parliament. It occurs to her that
Veneering is ’a representative man’—which
cannot in these times be doubted—and that
Her Majesty’s faithful Commons are incomplete
without him. So, Britannia mentions to a legal
gentleman of her acquaintance that if Veneering will
‘put down’ five thousand pounds, he may
write a couple of initial letters after his name at
the extremely cheap rate of two thousand five hundred
per letter. It is clearly understood between
Britannia and the legal gentleman that nobody is to
take up the five thousand pounds, but that being put
down they will disappear by magical conjuration and
enchantment.
The legal gentleman in Britannia’s confidence
going straight from that lady to Veneering, thus commissioned,
Veneering declares himself highly flattered, but requires
breathing time to ascertain ’whether his friends
will rally round him.’ Above all things,
he says, it behoves him to be clear, at a crisis of
this importance, ’whether his friends will rally
round him.’ The legal gentleman, in the
interests of his client cannot allow much time for
this purpose, as the lady rather thinks she knows
somebody prepared to put down six thousand pounds;
but he says he will give Veneering four hours.
