“Pooh! A pretty temper you come to bed in, Mr. Caudle, I can see! Oh, don’t deny it - I think I ought to know by this time. But it’s always the way; whenever I get up a few things, the house can hardly hold you! Nobody cries out more about clean linen than you do - and nobody leads a poor woman so miserable a life when she tries to make her husband comfortable. Yes, Mr. Caudle - comfortable! You needn’t keep chewing the word, as if you couldn’t swallow it.
“Was there ever such a woman?
“No, Caudle; I hope not: I should hope no other wife was ever put upon as I am! It’s all very well for you. I can’t have a little wash at home like anybody else but you must go about the house swearing to yourself, and looking at your wife as if she was your bitterest enemy. But I suppose you’d rather we didn’t wash at all. Yes; then you’d be happy! To be sure you would - you’d like to have all the children in their dirt, like potatoes: anything, so that it didn’t disturb you. I wish you’d had a wife who never washed - she’d have suited you, she would. Yes; a fine lady who’d have let your children go that you might have scraped ’em. She’d have been much better cared for than I am. I only wish I could let all of you go without clean linen at all - yes, all of you. I wish I could! And if I wasn’t a slave to my family, unlike anybody else, I should.
“No, Mr. Caudle; the house isn’t tossed about in water as if it was Noah’s Ark. And you ought to be ashamed of yourself to talk of Noah’s Ark in that loose manner. I’m sure I don’t know what I’ve done to be married to a man of such principles. No: and the whole house doesn’t taste of soap-suds either; and if it did, any other man but yourself would be above naming it. I suppose I don’t like washing-day any more than yourself. What do you say?
“Yes, I do?
“Ha! you’re wrong there, Mr. Caudle. No; I don’t like it because it makes everybody else uncomfortable. No; and I ought not to have been born a mermaid, that I might always have been in water. A mermaid, indeed! What next will you call me? But no man, Mr. Caudle, says such things to his wife as you. However, as I’ve said before, it can’t last long, that’s one comfort. What do you say?
“You’re glad of it?
“You’re a brute, Mr. Caudle! No, you didn’t mean washing: I know what you mean. A pretty speech to a woman who’s been the wife to you I have! You’ll repent it when it’s too late: yes, I wouldn’t have your feelings when I’m gone, Caudle; no, not for the Bank of England.
“And when we only wash once a fortnight! Ha! I only wish you had some wives, they’d wash once a week! Besides, if once a fortnight’s too much for you, why don’t you give me money that we may have things to go a month? Is it my fault if we’re short? What do you say?
“My ‘once a fortnight’ lasts three days?