Mrs Lirripers Lodgings | Page 6

to know how opinions are formed at
Wozenham's on any point. But Mary Anne Perkinsop although I
behaved handsomely to her and she behaved unhandsomely to me was
worth her weight in gold as overawing lodgers without driving them
away, for lodgers would be far more sparing of their bells with Mary
Anne than I ever knew them to be with Maid or Mistress, which is a
great triumph especially when accompanied with a cast in the eye and a

bag of bones, but it was the steadiness of her way with them through
her father's having failed in Pork. It was Mary Anne's looking so
respectable in her person and being so strict in her spirits that
conquered the tea-and-sugarest gentleman (for he weighed them both in
a pair of scales every morning) that I have ever had to deal with and no
lamb grew meeker, still it afterwards came round to me that Miss
Wozenham happening to pass and seeing Mary Anne take in the milk
of a milkman that made free in a rosy-faced way (I think no worse of
him) with every girl in the street but was quite frozen up like the statue
at Charing-cross by her, saw Mary Anne's value in the lodging business
and went as high as one pound per quarter more, consequently Mary
Anne with not a word betwixt us says "If you will provide yourself Mrs.
Lirriper in a month from this day I have already done the same," which
hurt me and I said so, and she then hurt me more by insinuating that her
father having failed in Pork had laid her open to it.
My dear I do assure you it's a harassing thing to know what kind of
girls to give the preference to, for if they are lively they get bell'd off
their legs and if they are sluggish you suffer from it yourself in
complaints and if they are sparkling-eyed they get made love to, and if
they are smart in their persons they try on your Lodgers' bonnets and if
they are musical I defy you to keep them away from bands and organs,
and allowing for any difference you like in their heads their heads will
be always out of window just the same. And then what the gentlemen
like in girls the ladies don't, which is fruitful hot water for all parties,
and then there's temper though such a temper as Caroline Maxey's I
hope not often. A good- looking black-eyed girl was Caroline and a
comely-made girl to your cost when she did break out and laid about
her, as took place first and last through a new-married couple come to
see London in the first floor and the lady very high and it WAS
supposed not liking the good looks of Caroline having none of her own
to spare, but anyhow she did try Caroline though that was no excuse.
So one afternoon Caroline comes down into the kitchen flushed and
flashing, and she says to me "Mrs. Lirriper that woman in the first has
aggravated me past bearing," I says "Caroline keep your temper,"
Caroline says with a curdling laugh "Keep my temper? You're right
Mrs. Lirriper, so I will. Capital D her!" bursts out Caroline (you might

have struck me into the centre of the earth with a feather when she said
it) "I'll give her a touch of the temper that I keep!" Caroline downs with
her hair my dear, screeches and rushes up- stairs, I following as fast as
my trembling legs could bear me, but before I got into the room the
dinner-cloth and pink-and-white service all dragged off upon the floor
with a crash and the new- married couple on their backs in the firegrate,
him with the shovel and tongs and a dish of cucumber across him and a
mercy it was summer-time. "Caroline" I says "be calm," but she catches
off my cap and tears it in her teeth as she passes me, then pounces on
the new-married lady makes her a bundle of ribbons takes her by the
two ears and knocks the back of her head upon the carpet Murder
screaming all the time Policemen running down the street and
Wozenham's windows (judge of my feelings when I came to know it)
thrown up and Miss Wozenham calling out from the balcony with
crocodile's tears "It's Mrs. Lirriper been overcharging somebody to
madness--she'll be murdered--I always thought so--Pleeseman save
her!" My dear four of them and Caroline behind the chiffoniere
attacking with the poker and when disarmed prize-fighting with her
double fists, and down and up and up and down and dreadful! But I
couldn't bear to see the poor young creature roughly handled and her
hair torn when they got