. But this highly honourable fact, to the credit of poor
Cockayne, albeit it was unpleasant to the nostrils of Mrs. C. when she
had skimmed some of the richest of the Clapham _creme_ into her
drawing-room, did not abate her resolve to put at least three farthings
of the penny into her pocket, for her uses and those of her simple and
innocent daughters. Mrs. Cockayne, being an economical woman, spent more
money on herself, her house, and her children than any lady within a
mile of Cockayne House. It is certain that she was an excellent mother
to her three daughters, for she reminded Cockayne every night
regularly--as regularly, he said, as he took his socks off--that if it
were not for her, she did not know what would become of the children.
She was quite sure their father wouldn't trouble his head about them.

Perhaps Mrs. Cockayne was right. Cockayne had slaved in business only
thirty-five years out of the fifty-two he had passed in this vale of
tears, and had only lodged her at last in a brougham and pair. He might
have kept in harness another ten years, and set her up in a carriage and
four. She was sure he didn't know what to do with himself, now he had
retired. He was much better tempered when he went off to business by the
nine o'clock omnibus every morning; and before he had given himself such
ridiculous airs, and put himself on all kinds of committees he didn't
understand anything about, and taken to make himself disagreeable to his
neighbours in the vestry-hall, and moving what he called amendments and
riders, for the mere pleasure, she verily believed, of opposing
somebody, as he did everybody in his own house, and of hearing himself
talk. Does the reader perceive by this time the kind of lady Mrs.
Cockayne was, and what a comfort she must have been to her husband in
the autumn of his life?

How he must have listened for what the novelists call "her every
footstep," and treasured her every syllable! It was mercifully ordained
that Mr. Cockayne should be a good-tempered, non-resisting man. When
Mrs. Cockayne was, as her sons pleasantly and respectfully phrased it,
"down upon the governor," the good man, like the flowers in the poem,
"dipped and rose, and turned to look at her." He sparkled while she
stormed. He smiled when the shafts of her sarcasm were thrown
point-blank at him. He was good-tempered before the storm began, while
it lasted, and when it was over. Mrs. Cockayne had the ingenuity to
pretend that