“You don’t know?
“Ha! I don’t know that.
“What, Mr. Caudle?
“You’ll have a separate room - you’ll not be tormented in this manner?
“No, you won’t, sir - not while I’m alive. A separate room! And you call yourself a religious man, Mr. Caudle. I’d advise you to take down the Prayer Book, and read over the Marriage Service. A separate room, indeed! Caudle, you’re getting quite a heathen. A separate room! Well, the servants would talk then! But no: no man - not the best that ever trod, Caudle - should ever make me look so contemptible.
“I sha’n’t go to sleep; and you ought to know me better than to ask me to hold my tongue. Because you come home when I’ve just stepped out to do a little shopping, you’re worse than a fury. I should like to know how many hours I sit up for you? What do you say?
“Nobody wants me to sit up?
“Ha! that’s like the gratitude of men - just like ’em! But a poor woman can’t leave the house, that - what?
“Why can’t I go at reasonable hours?
“Reasonable! What do you call eight o’clock? If I went out at eleven and twelve, as you come home, then you might talk; but seven or eight o’clock - why, it’s the cool of the evening; the nicest time to enjoy a walk; and, as I say, do a little bit of shopping. Oh yes, Mr. Caudle, I do think of the people that are kept in the shops just as much as you; but that’s nothing at all to do with it. I know what you’d have. You’d have all those young men let away early from the counter to improve what you please to call their minds. Pretty notions you pick up among a set of free-thinkers, and I don’t know what! When I was a girl, people never talked of minds - intellect, I believe you call it. Nonsense! a new-fangled thing, just come up; and the sooner it goes out, the better.