CRUM. Ha, ha! Heyday! I think I ought to know that face again.
BET. If you ever saw it before, you certainly ought.
CRUM. Have I not met you rather frequently of late, walking of an evening with our young clerk, Joseph Harris?
BET. Yes, sir. We’ve rather delicate constitutions both of us, so we generally go out for a little fresh air and exercise every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, after work hours. We can’t get out any other evenings, sir. I suppose, you’re Mr. Crummy! You’re not Mr. Mouser. We all know him!
CRUM. We! Who?
BET. Why, all us girls at the laundry over the way. Ah, there’s a pattern for a husband! ’Tisn’t every woman, sir, as gets a Mouser. No, sir—Mousers are scarce.
CRUM. And yet you’d take your chance and marry Joseph Harris?
BET. Just try me! And now I think of it, sir, he has told me more than once that you said if ever he found a nice, genteel, respectable young woman that he’d like to marry, you’d do something for him, sir.
CRUM. Oh, then, you, I suppose, are the——
BET. The young woman? Yes, sir, Elizabeth Baker, the youngest of sixteen sisters, and all of ’em girls, sir—and hard-working girls, too, sir. It’s worth going over to our laundry to see us, sir. Fancy sixteen Bakers a washing, all of a row!