“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 for me. Paying for new nozzles, for other people to laugh at you. Oh, 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!
“Men, indeed! - call themselves lords of the creation! - pretty lords, when they can’t even take care of an umbrella!
“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. Oh, don’t tell me! I know you will. Else you’d never have lent the umbrella!
“You have to go on Thursday about that summons and, of course, you can’t go. No, indeed, you don’t go without the umbrella. You may lose the debt for what I care - it won’t be so much as spoiling your clothes - better lose it: people deserve to lose debts who lend umbrellas!
“And I should like to know how I’m to go to mother’s without the umbrella! Oh, don’t tell me that I said I would go - that’s nothing to do with it; nothing at all. She’ll think I’m neglecting her, and the little money we were to have we sha’n’t have at all - because we’ve no umbrella.
“The children, too! Dear things! They’ll be sopping wet; for they sha’n’t stop at home - they sha’n’t lose their learning; it’s all their father will leave ’em, I’m sure. But they shall go to school. Don’t tell me I said they shouldn’t: you are so aggravating, 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.”
“At length,” writes Caudle, “I fell asleep; and dreamt that the sky was turned into green calico, with whalebone ribs; that, in fact, the whole world turned round under a tremendous umbrella!”
LECTURE VII - MR. CAUDLE HAS VENTURED A REMONSTRANCE ON HIS DAY’S DINNER: COLD MUTTON, AND NO PUDDING. - MRS. CAUDLE DEFENDS THE COLD SHOULDER
“Umph! I’m sure! Well! I wonder what it will be next? There’s nothing proper, now - nothing at all. Better get somebody else to keep the house, I think. I can’t do it now, it seems; I’m only in the way here: I’d better take the children, and go.
“What am I grumbling about now? It’s very well for you to ask that! I’m sure I’d better be out of the world than - there now, Mr. Caudle; there you are again! I shall speak, sir. It isn’t often I open my mouth, Heaven knows! But you like to hear nobody talk but yourself. You ought to have married a negro slave, and not any respectable woman.