Oh, it's enough to make
anyone's back bone curdle. 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.
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