ding among themselves) to drop in one after
another, just about tea-time. This being a season favourable to
conversation, and the room being a cool, shady, lazy kind of place,
with some plants at the open window shutting out the dust, and
interposing pleasantly enough between the tea table within and the old
Tower without, it is no wonder that the ladies felt an inclination to
talk and linger, especially when there are taken into account the
additional inducements of fresh butter, new bread, shrimps, and
watercresses.

Now, the ladies being together under these circumstances, it was
extremely natural that the discourse should turn upon the propensity of
mankind to tyrannize over the weaker sex, and the duty that developed
upon the weaker sex to resist that tyranny and assert their rights and
dignity. It was natural for four reasons: firstly, because Mrs Quilp
being a young woman and notoriously under the dominion of her husband
ought to be excited to rebel; secondly, because Mrs Quilp's parent was
known to be laudably shrewish in her disposition and inclined to resist
male authority; thirdly, because each visitor wished to show for
herself how superior she was in this respect to the generality of her
sex; and fourthly, because the company being accustomed to scandalise
each other in pairs, were deprived of their usual subject of
conversation now that they were all assembled in close friendship, and
had consequently no better employment than to attack the common enemy.

Moved by these considerations, a stout lady opened the proceedings by
inquiring, with an air of great concern and sympathy, how Mr Quilp was;
whereunto Mr Quilp's wife's mother replied sharply, 'Oh! He was well
enough--nothing much was every the matter with him--and ill weeds were
sure to thrive.' All the ladies then sighed in concert, shook their
heads gravely, and looked at Mrs Quilp as a martyr.

'Ah!' said the spokeswoman, 'I wish you'd give her a little of your
advice, Mrs Jiniwin'--Mrs Quilp had been a Miss Jiniwin it should be
observed--'nobody knows better than you, ma'am, what us women owe to
ourselves.'

'Owe indeed, ma'am!' replied Mrs Jiniwin. 'When my poor husband, her
dear father, was alive, if he had ever ventured a cross word to me, I'd
have--' The good old lady did not finish the sentence, but she twisted
off the head of a shrimp with a vindictiveness which seemed to imply
that the action was in some degree a substitute for words. In