"Well, blaze away. What is yer going to say now?"
"I feel, Ben, that I am a very different woman from what I was—very different."
"Then you must have gained by the exchange, for you was, I will say it, anything but a pleasant bit o' goods. There's poor old Oakley a-making of spectacles all days, and a-wearing of his old eyes out—and there's Miss Johanna, bless her heart! as wise a little bit o' human nature as you'd wish to see, whether she's in petticoats or the other things; and yet you neglects 'em both, all for to run arter a canting snivelling wagabone like this Lupin, that we wouldn't have among the beasteses at the Tower, if so be he'd come and offer himself."
"I know it, Ben—I know it."
"You know it! Why didn't you know it before?"
"I don't know, Ben; but my eyes are open now. I have had a lesson that to my dying day I shall never forget. I have found that piety may only be a cloak with which to cover up the most monstrous iniquity."
"Oh, you have made that discovery, have you?"
"I have, indeed, Ben."
"Well, I knowed as much as that when I was a small baby. It only shows how back'ard some folks is in coming for'ard with their edication."
"Yes, Ben."