“For whom?” I said, with great indignation.
The man put his finger up to his mouth, as much as to say “Mum” before company.
“Say what you have to say, man,” I replied, “and don’t stand there making any of your signs and signals to me.”
On this, he came as close as he dared to me, and keeping his eye fixed on Edward, said, in a low whisper through the corner of his mouth—“You know—for Ned Twist, the life-guardsman.”
I gave a loud scream, and flying to Edward, cried out—“Oh, Edward, here’s a man says I owe him a bill for tobacco for that odious Ned Twist, the life-guardsman!”
Edward went up to him directly, and told him that it must be the servant that he wanted, and not myself, as I was his wife.
“Lord bless you!” replied the man, “as if I hadn’t seen the lady in my shop, along with Ned Twist, scores and scores of times, in the very same black velvet shawl that she’s got on now.”
I forgot what they said to each other after this, but I know they were just getting to high words—for the impudent wretch would keep insisting that it was I, and none other, who had purchased the tobacco of him for Ned Twist; and I was expecting every moment that Edward would be knocking him down, when, to my great joy, I heard Miss Susan come up in the hackney-coach to the door, and I ran to it, and brought her into the room. Then it turned out that all the time during my confinement that minx, Miss Susan, had been in the habit of going out of an evening, two or three times a week, dressed in my black velvet shawl, and running up all kinds of debts for Mr. Ned Twist, all round the neighbourhood.
Of course, this was more than I could bear; so I just told Miss Susan that she would please to provide herself with a new situation that day month; and very luckily, her quarter would be just up then, or else I should certainly have had to have packed her off with a good part of her wages in advance.
The worst of it all was too, that Mrs. Yapp, although she had been living under our roof, and feeding off the fat of the land at our table for near upon a couple of months, must go insulting me before she left our house, and repeated to me in a most tantalising and unladylike way, all that I had said to her in the morning, about putting up with what she was pleased to call a mere joke, and reminding me of what I had very imprudently told her, that if I found a servant wearing my things, I should not care so much about it, after all. So as I wasn’t going to put up with her nasty taunts all the way down to the coach-office, I said I felt very ill, and wasn’t in a fit state to go such a distance. Edward, too, it struck me at the time, might have behaved himself with a little more decency, for he would keep saying all kinds of unpleasant things, and which I dare say, he thought very clever indeed; but I couldn’t see the point of them, though Mrs. Yapp must go giggling at them, as if they were the finest fun alive.