“Oh, I was never taken aback so much in my whole life!
“Not that I cared for what he owed me, you know, although I am a poor lone widow without any natural protector, and earn every penny by the sweat of my brow.
“Oh, it hurt Miss Josephine Smith, next door, very much, my dear; she has never been the same girl since, for she was ‘dead on’ to him.
“Mistress Haylark was frantic almost; she had loaned him £10, and he walked off with her best diamond ring; think o’ that.
“How that diamond ring (‘paste,’ my dear, between ourselves) should have come into his hands is a mystery to me, without she gave it to him, which shows how some people can lower themselves when they are manœuvring to marry off a daughter.
“But between you and me, although everybody knows that I am not given to backbiting or detracting, which I consider mean in anybody, but specially in a landlady talking of her own lodgers, who pay regular, and give little trouble, I must say, my dear, that I think at that time she was trying to get the young man herself!
“Because, although my eyes are not the best in the world, on account of the troubles I have gone through, and the many briny tears I have shed, I can see as far as most folks, and when I hear silk rustling on a dark landing, and hear a scuffling going on, it don’t take long for me to guess which way the wind is blowing in certain quarters that I know of, my dear.”
“You see there are so many different kinds of people, that it takes great experience and the patience of Job, to keep a respectable boarding house the way it should be.
“Now, there’s Mistress Tiffler, my dear, who keeps a house just round the corner—why bless you, I wouldn’t have a place like hers for all the world—I can’t go by the house without turning up my nose, for really it seems to smell of nothing else but grease and dirt.
“Nobody looks clean at that house; and, as to feeding, good gracious! you should only see what half-starved wretches they are. Well, how can it be otherwise, my dear?