9. Ha! and it was only last week I had a new nozzle put to that umbrella. I’m sure if I’d have known as much as I do now, it might have gone without one. Paying for new nozzles for other people to laugh at you! O, it’s all very well for you; you can go to sleep. You’ve no thought of your poor patient wife, and your own dear children: you think of nothing but lending umbrellas!
10. Men, indeed! Call themselves lords of creation! pretty lords, when they can’t even take care of an umbrella!
11. I know that walk to-morrow will be the death of me, but that’s what you want: then you may go to your club, and do as you like; and then nicely my poor dear children will be used; but then, sir, then you’ll be happy. O, don’t tell me! I know you will! else you’d never have lent the umbrella!
12. The children, dear things! they’ll be sopping wet; for they shan’t stay at home; they shan’t lose their learning; it’s ill their father will leave them, I’m sure.—But they shall go to school. Don’t tell me they needn’t: you are so aggravating[606], Caudle, you’d spoil the temper of an angel; they shall go to school! mark that: and if they get their deaths of cold, it’s not my fault; I didn’t lend the umbrella.
13. “Here,” says Caudle, in his manuscript, “I fell asleep, and dreamed that the sky was turned into green calico, with whalebone ribs: that, in fact, the whole world revolved under a tremendous umbrella!”
[602] There is an old superstition in England that if it rains on St. Swithin’s day (15th July), not one of the next forty days will be wholly without rain.
[603] Cab, a kind of carriage, with two or four wheels, drawn by one horse.
[604] Clogs, a kind of overshoes worn to keep the feet dry.
[605] Traipsˊ-ing, a colloquial or low word, meaning, running about idly or carelessly.
[606] Agˊ-gra-vat-ing, making worse; also colloquially, provoking; irritating.