ded little bill," when--in
between Ben Allen's inquiry, "How long has it been running?" and Bob
Sawyer's reply, "Only about a quarter and a month or so"--the Reader
parenthetically remarked, with a philosophic air, "A bill, by the way,
is the most extraordinary locomotive engine that the genius of man ever
produced: it would keep on running during the longest lifetime without
ever once stopping of its own accord." Thus also was it, when he added
meditatively to Bob's hesitating explanation to Mrs. Raddle, "the fact
is that I have been disappointed in the City to-day"--"Extraordinary
place that City: astonishing number of men always _are_ getting
disappointed there." Hereupon it was that that fiercest of little women,
Mrs. Raddle, who had entered "in a tremble with passion and pale with
rage," fairly let out at her lodger. Her incidental bout with Mr. Ben
Allen, when he soothingly(!) interpolated, "My good soul," was, in
the Reading, in two senses, a memorable diversion. Beginning with a
sarcastic quivering in her voice, "I am not _aweer_, sir, that you have
any right to address your conversation to _me_. I don't think I let
these apartments to _you_, sir--" Mrs. Raddle's anger rose through an
indignant _crescendo_, on Ben Allen's remonstrating, "But you are such
an unreasonable woman"--to the sharp and biting interrogation, "I beg
your parding, young man, but will you have the goodness to call me that
again, sir?"

Ben Allen, meekly and somewhat uneasy on his own account,--"I didn't
make use of the word in any invidious sense, ma'am."

Landlady, louder and more imperatively,--"I beg your parding, young man,
but _who_ do you call a woman? Did you make that remark to me, sir?"

"_Why, bless my heart!_"

"Did you apply that name to me, I ask of you, sir?"

On his answering, Well, of course he did!--then, as she retreated
towards the open room-door, came the last outburst of her invectives,
high-pitched in their voluble utterance, against him, against them
both, against everybody, including Mr. Raddle in the kitchen--"a base,
faint-hearted, timorous wretch, that's afraid to come upstairs and face
the ruffinly creaturs--that's _afraid_ to come--that's afraid!"
Ending with her screaming descent of the stairs in the midst of a loud
double-knock, upon the arrival just then of the Pickwickians, when, "in
an uncontrollable burst of mental agony," Mrs. Raddle threw down all
the umbrellas in the passage, disappearing into the