“Yes, I see how it will be. Now you’ve once gone to a tavern, you’ll always be going. You’ll be coming home tipsy every night; and tumbling down and breaking your leg, and putting out your shoulder; and bringing all sorts of disgrace and expense upon us. And then you’ll be getting into a street fight - oh! I know your temper too well to doubt it, Mr. Caudle - and be knocking down some of the police. And then I know what will follow. It must follow. Yes, you’ll be sent for a month or six weeks to the treadmill. Pretty thing that, for a respectable tradesman, Mr. Caudle, to be put upon the treadmill with all sorts of thieves and vagabonds, and - there, again, that horrible tobacco! - and riffraff of every kind. I should like to know how your children are to hold up their heads, after their father has been upon the treadmill? - No; I won’t go to sleep. And I’m not talking of what’s impossible. I know it will all happen - every bit of it. If it wasn’t for the dear children, you might be ruined and I wouldn’t so much as speak about it, but - oh, dear, dear! at least you might go where they smoke good tobacco - but I can’t forget that I’m their mother. At least, they shall have one parent.
“Taverns! Never did a man go to a tavern who didn’t die a beggar. And how your pot-companions will laugh at you when they see your name in the Gazette! For it must happen. Your business is sure to fall off; for what respectable people will buy toys for their children of a drunkard? You’re not a drunkard! No: but you will be - it’s all the same.
“You’ve begun by staying out till midnight. By-and-by ’twill be all night. But don’t you think, Mr. Caudle, you shall ever have a key. I know you. Yes; you’d do exactly like that Prettyman, and what did he do, only last Wednesday? Why, he let himself in about four in the morning, and brought home with him his pot-companion, Puffy. His dear wife woke at six, and saw Prettyman’s dirty boots at her bedside. And where was the wretch, her husband? Why, he was drinking downstairs - swilling. Yes; worse than a midnight robber, he’d taken the keys out of his dear wife’s pockets - ha! what that poor creature has to bear! - and had got at the brandy. A pretty thing for a wife to wake at six in the morning, and instead of her husband to see his dirty boots!
“But I’ll not be made your victim, Mr. Caudle, not I. You shall never get at my keys, for they shall lie under my pillow - under my own head, Mr. Caudle.
“You’ll be ruined, but if I can help it, you shall ruin nobody but yourself.
“Oh, that hor - hor - hor - i - ble tob - ac - co!”
To this lecture, Caudle affixes no comment. A certain proof, we think, that the man had nothing to say for himself.
LECTURE III - MR. CAUDLE JOINS A CLUB - “THE SKYLARKS.”
“Well, if a woman hadn’t better be in her grave than be married! That is, if she can’t be married to a decent man. No; I don’t care if you are tired, I shan’t let you go to sleep. No, and I won’t say what I have to say in the morning; I’ll say it now. It’s all very well for you to come home at what time you like - it’s now half-past twelve - and expect I’m to hold my tongue, and let you go to sleep. What next, I wonder? A woman had better be sold for a slave at once.
“And so you’ve gone and joined a club? The Skylarks, indeed! A pretty skylark you’ll make of yourself! But I won’t stay and be ruined by you. No: I’m determined on that. I’ll go and take the dear children, and you may get who you like to keep your house. That is, as long as you have a house to keep - and that won’t be long, I know.