Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl | Page 6

my eyes, in contrast to her gorgeous descriptions. Finally she would
state her price, and by no art or persuasion would she give way a penny
afterwards.
I believe she was given to fits. Anyhow she fell very ill once when she
came, and had to be given brandy to support her. I was afraid she was
going to die in the house, which would have been exceedingly

unpleasant, for it is a heinous breach of gentility to be found mixed up
in any such transactions. We are so foolish, we have such little minds,
we try to hide our doings from our neighbors, who are all going
through the same experiences, and are equally desirous of concealing
them from us. If all our screens were taken away what a comedy of
errors would be disclosed. How surprised we should be to see everyone
committing follies of which we have been so ashamed and so anxious
to hide from the eyes of all!
After all the brandy had a most beneficial effect. I think it must have
flown to her head; for never before had she given such large amounts. I
was quite sorry to find her so well at her next advent. Her sniff was
even more eloquent, and her prices had returned to their original low
level. I regret now that I did not again try the brandy.
Another woman I employed was even uglier than the first. She was so
wholesomely ugly. A great red full moon represented her countenance,
radiant with the color of the Eiffel Tower. She was altogether a more
satisfactory chancellor than the other. She always insisted on your
stating your own price to begin with. "Well, what d'yer think yerself,
mum?" was her invariable ejaculation, and then, hearing your reply,
would break in on whatever you said by "It ain't worth more than _'arf_
that to me, mum," in the most aggrieved voice. I became used to her in
time, and knowing she would halve whatever I said, used to demand
double the worth of the thing. "What d'yer think yerself, mum?" You
grow so tired of your opinion being thus asked. I wonder how many
times she says it in a day! It is a cautious way of going about it, at any
rate. If that woman ever appeared in a police court on a charge of
dishonesty, and the magistrate asked her what she had to say to the
charge, the answer would undoubtedly be, "Well, what d'yer think
yerself, sir?"
Some of those bills are still unpaid. Quarter day is coming round again,
so I expect there will be some more soon. Alas! I am an unlucky being,
born under an unlucky star.
You may think it a strange notion, but I attribute all my ill-luck to
spiders:

"If you wish to live and thrive, Let a spider run alive."
I am not superstitious as a rule, but I cannot help thinking that my
wholesale massacre of this obnoxious insect has something to do with
my misfortunes by way of retribution.
I hate spiders! Nearly everybody has a pet aversion of some sort. I have
heard people shriek at the sight of a caterpillar, and turn pale in the
neighborhood of a toad. My great antipathy is a spider! Not that I
object to its treatment of flies--nasty little worries, they deserve
everything that happens to them. But it is the appearance of a spider
that is so against it. There is a shifty expression about the eye, and such
a leer on the upper lip. Money spinners are not so objectionable. I can
tolerate them. It is the big, almost tarantulas, from which I flee. Those
creatures which start up suddenly, and run across the room close by
where you are sitting; creatures so large that you can almost hear their
footsteps as they pass.
A man told me once he had found a spider in his room of such
enormous dimensions that he had to open the door in order that it might
get out!
Overdrawn, you say? Well, it sounds a little improbable certainly; not
so much on account of the unusual size of the spider as for the
extraordinary consideration on the part of the man.
CHAPTER III.
ON POLITICS.
Perhaps you don't think me competent to talk about politics? "What do
women know about such things?" asks the superior masculine mind.
Well, they don't know so much as men, I admit, and I earnestly hope
they never will. A woman who is infected with politics is a positive
pest, and should be removed at once. If I do not know anything about
them, at any rate I ought to, as I have been brought up in a raging Tory
household, and so have been steeped in