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