"
As I have mentioned Mrs Jupp, I may as well say here the little that
remains to be said about her. She is a very old woman now, but no one
now living, as she says triumphantly, can say how old, for the woman in
the Old Kent Road is dead, and presumably has carried her secret to the
grave. Old, however, though she is, she lives in the same house, and
finds it hard work to make the two ends meet, but I do not know that she
minds this very much, and it has prevented her from getting more to drink
than would be good for her. It is no use trying to do anything for her
beyond paying her allowance weekly, and absolutely refusing to let her
anticipate it. She pawns her flat iron every Saturday for 4d., and takes
it out every Monday morning for 4.5d. 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.
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