Then I thought perhaps my
Rose might get on better with him, so I set her to dust him and
clean him as though I were busy, and gave her such a beautiful clean
new pinny, but he never took no notice of her no more than he did of
me, and she didn't want no compliment neither; she wouldn't have taken
not a shilling from him, though he had offered it, but he didn't
seem to know anything at all. I can't make out what the young men
are a-coming to; I wish the horn may blow for me and the worms take me
this very night, if it's not enough to make a woman stand before God
and strike the one half on 'em silly to see the way they goes on,
and many an honest girl has to go home night after night without so
much as a fourpenny-bit and paying three and sixpence a week rent, and
not a shelf nor cupboard in the place and a dead wall in front of
the window.
"It's not Mr. Pontifex," she continued, "that's so bad; he's good at
heart. He never says nothing unkind. And then there's his dear eyes-
but when I speak about that to my Rose she calls me an old fool and
says I ought to be poleaxed. It's that Pryer as I can't abide. Oh, he!
He likes to wound a woman's feelings, he do, and to chuck anything
in her face, he do- he likes to wind a woman up and to wound her
down.
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