She pawns her flat
iron every Saturday for 4d., and takes it out every Monday morning for
4 1/2d. when she gets her allowance, and has done this for the last
ten years as regularly as the week comes round. As long as she does
not let the flat iron actually go we know that she can still worry out
her financial problems in her own hugger-mugger way and had better
be left to do so. If the flat iron were to go beyond redemption, we
should know that it was time to interfere. I do not know why, but
there is something about her which always reminds me of a woman who
was as unlike her as one person can be to another- I mean Ernest's
mother.
The last time I had a long gossip with her was about two years ago
when she came to me instead of to Ernest. She said she had seen a
cab drive up just as she was going to enter the staircase, and had
seen Mr. Pontifex's pa put his Beelzebub old head out of the window,
so she had come on to me, for she hadn't greased her sides for no
curtsey, not for the likes of him. She professed to be very much
down on her luck. Her lodgers did use her so dreadful going away
without paying and leaving not so much as a stick behind, but to-day
she was as pleased as a penny carrot.
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