“Good-by, Maisie, see you another day, for my missus isn’t a disagreeable old cat like most of ’em. That’s why I ’ave this bit of talk with you. But I means to better myself soon as I can.”
Ada’s Beast of a Man
“Well, m’am, I feels all over alike. That beast of a ’usband of my pretty pet of a Ada he wouldn’t let her have a van to move in when she had all that sweep of furniture that he bought for her at the market for five pounds ($25) and her chest of drawsers besides. Real, I don’t feel as if I could eat a bit, I don’t.
“She had to get a barrow, Ada had, and a wheel came hoff and the pretty pet had to hold it up with the long broom while the man was a-pushing of it. But I will say, she has improved her rooms in moving.
“But it didn’t look at all like a man of his standing, the governor of a coal cart. And you can imagine what the neighbors said, seeing the moving on the barrow and my pretty pet holding of it up.
“But I must say she got blinds, they are those Verinkers (Venetians) you ’eard of. Sure he is a beast, my pretty pet’s man. He wouldn’t even put up the indecent lights for her, and she had to pay a man tuppence to do it for her while she was still a-trembling from holding up the barrow and that after paying tuppence halfpenny for the indecent lights.”
Jealousy in Lowland
(Overheard near Billingsgate Market.)
“Hullo, how you gettin’ on and how’s your old man?”
“See ’ere, you remembers ’ow I looked atter ’im when he was that damn’ ill and all the nourishments I got ’im. Well ’e got that strong again but ’e wouldn’t go to work. So I says to ’im yesterday mornin’ w’en ’e was a-sittin’ over the fire smokin’ his dirty pipe, ‘Ain’t you ever to go work no more?’