' Oh! dear, it's coming on to
rain. I do hate a wet Saturday night- poor women with their nice white
stockings and their living to get," etc., etc.
And yet age does not wither this godless old sinner, as people would
say it ought to do. Whatever life she has led, it has agreed with
her very sufficiently. At times she gives us to understand that she is
still much solicited; at others she takes quite a different tone.
She has not allowed even Joe King so much as to put his lips to hers
this ten years. She would rather have a mutton chop any day. "But
ah! you should have seen me when I was sweet seventeen. I was the very
moral of my poor dear mother, and she was a pretty woman, though I say
it that shouldn't. She had such a splendid mouth of teeth. It was a
sin to bury her in her teeth."
I only knew of one thing at which she professes to be shocked. It is
that her son Tom and his wife Topsy are teaching the baby to swear.
"Oh! it's too dreadful awful," she exclaimed; "I don't know the
meaning of the words, but I tell him he's a drunken sot." I believe
the old woman in reality rather likes it.
"But surely, Mrs. Jupp," said I, "Tom's wife used not to be Topsy.
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