his good name is dear to me. I am going into
the Lodgings gentlemen as a business and if I
prosper every farthing that my late husband
owed shall be paid for the sake of the love I
bore him, by this right hand." It took a long
time to do but it was done, and the silver
cream-jug which is between ourselves and the
bed and the mattress in my room up-stairs (or it
would have found legs so sure as ever the
Furnished bill was up) being presented by the
gentlemen engraved "To Mrs. Lirriper a mark of
grateful respect for her honourable conduct"
gave me a turn which was too much for my
feelings, till Mr. Betley which at that time had
the parlours and loved his joke says "Cheer up
Mrs. Lirriper, you should feel as if it was only
your christening and they were your godfathers
and godmothers which did promise for you."
And it brought me round, and I don't mind
confessing to you my dear that I then put a
sandwich and a drop of sherry in a little basket and
went down to Hatfield churchyard outside the
coach and kissed my hand and laid it with a
kind of a proud and swelling love on my
husband's grave, though bless you it had taken me
so long to clear his name that my wedding ring
was worn quite fine and smooth when I laid it
on the green green waving grass.

I am an old woman now and my good looks
are gone but that's me my dear over the plate-
warmer and considered like in the times when
you used to pay two guineas on ivory and took
your chance pretty much how you came out,
which made you very careful how you left it
about afterwards because people were turned so
red and uncomfortable by mostly guessing it
was somebody else quite different, and there was
once a certain person that had put his money in
a hop business that came in one morning to pay
his rent and his respects being the second floor
that would have taken it down from its hook
and put it in his breast pocket—you understand
my dear—for the L, he says, of the original—
only there was no mellowness in his voice and I
wouldn't let him, but his opinion of it you may
gather from his saying to it "Speak to me
Emma!" which was far from a rational
observation no doubt but still a tribute to its being
a likeness, and I think myself it was like me
when I was young and wore that sort of stays.

But it was about the Lodgings that I was
intending to hold forth and certainly I ought to
know something of the business having been in
it so long, for it was early in the second year of
my married life that I lost my poor Lirriper and
I set up at Islington directly afterwards and
afterwards came here, being two houses and
eight and thirty years and some losses and a
deal of experience.

Girls are your first trial after fixtures and
they try you even worse than what I call the
Wandering Christians, though why they should
roam the earth looking for bills and then coming
in and viewing the apartments and stickling
about terms and never at all wanting them or
dreaming of taking them being already provided,
is a mystery I should be thankful to have
explained if by any miracle it could be. It's
wonderful they live so long and thrive so on it but
I suppose the exercise makes it healthy, knocking
so much and going from house to house and up
and down stairs all day, and then their pretending
to be so particular and punctual is a most
astonishing thing, looking at their watches and
saying "Could you give me the refusal of the
rooms till twenty minutes past eleven the day
after to-morrow in the forenoon, and supposing
it to be considered essential by my friend from
the country could there be a small iron bedstead
put in the little room upon the stairs?" Why
when I was new to it my dear I used to
consider before I promised and to make my mind
anxious with calculations and to get quite
wearied out with disappointments, but now I
says "Certainly by all means" well knowing
it's a Wandering Christian and I shall hear
no more about it, indeed by this time I know
most of the Wandering Christians by sight
as well as they know me, it being the habit
of each individual revolving round London in
that capacity to come back about twice a year,
and it's very remarkable that it runs in families
and the children grow up to it, but even were it
otherwise I should no sooner hear of the friend
from the country which is a certain sign than I
should nod and say to myself You're a Wandering
Christian, though whether they are (as I
have heard) persons of small property with a
taste for regular employment and frequent
change of scene I cannot undertake to tell you.

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