, it was you _told_ me! _You_ remember. That night JOE
let out about her and the automatic scent fountain.

_Second Girl._ Oh, yes, I remember now. _(General disappointment. )_ I
couldn't help laughing myself. Joe didn't ought to have told--but she
needn't have got into such a state over it, _need_ she?

_First Girl,_ That was ELIZA all over. If GEORGE had been sensible,
he'd have broken it off then and there--but no, he wouldn't hear a
word against her, not at that time--it was the button-hook opened
_his_ eyes!

_[The other passengers strive to dissemble a frantic desire to know
how and why this delicate operation was performed._ Second Girl
(mysteriously)_. And enough too! But what put GEORGE off most was her
keeping that bag so quiet.

_[The general imagination is once more stirred to its depths by this
mysterious allusion._

_First Girl._ Yes, he did feel that, I know, he used to come and go
on about it to me by the hour together. "I shouldn't have minded so
much," he told me over and over again, with the tears standing in his
eyes,--"if it hadn't been that the bottles was all silver-mounted!"

_Second Girl._ Silver-mounted? I never heard of _that_ before--no
wonder he felt hurt!

_First Girl (impressively)._ Silver tops to everyone of them--and that
girl to turn round as she did, and her with an Uncle in the oil and
colour line, too--it nearly broke GEORGE'S 'art!

_Second Girl_. He's such a one to take on about things--but, as I said
to him, "GEORGE," I says, "You must remember it might have been worse.
Suppose you'd been married to that girl, and _then_ found out about
ALF and the Jubilee sixpence--how would _that_ have been?"

_First Girl (unconsciously acting as the mouth-piece of the other
passengers)._ And what did he say to _that?_

_Second Girl._ Oh, nothing--there was nothing he _could_ say, but
I could see he was struck. She behaved very mean to the last--she
wouldn't send back the German concertina.

_First Girl._ You don't say so! Well, I wouldn't have thought that of
her, bad as she is.

_Second Girl._ No, she stuck to it that it wasn't like a regular
present, being got through a grocer, and as she couldn't send him back
the tea, being drunk,--but did you hear how she treated EMMA over the
crinoline 'at she got for her?

_First Girl (to the immense relief of the rest)._ No, what was that?

_Second Girl._ Well, I had it from EMMA her own self. ELIZA wrote up
to her and says, in a post