shall try to take care of it beforehand, but he might deceive me.
Oh, my dear, all those fellows with their tricks and their manners do
deceive!' With the little fist in full action. 'And if so, I tell you
what I think I'd do. When he was asleep, I'd make a spoon red hot, and
I'd have some boiling liquor bubbling in a saucepan, and I'd take it
out hissing, and I'd open his mouth with the other hand--or perhaps he'd
sleep with his mouth ready open--and I'd pour it down his throat, and
blister it and choke him.'

'I am sure you would do no such horrible thing,' said Lizzie.

'Shouldn't I? Well; perhaps I shouldn't. But I should like to!'

'I am equally sure you would not.'

'Not even like to? Well, you generally know best. Only you haven't
always lived among it as I have lived--and your back isn't bad and your
legs are not queer.'

As they went on with their supper, Lizzie tried to bring her round to
that prettier and better state. But, the charm was broken. The person
of the house was the person of a house full of sordid shames and cares,
with an upper room in which that abased figure was infecting even
innocent sleep with sensual brutality and degradation. The doll's
dressmaker had become a little quaint shrew; of the world, worldly; of
the earth, earthy.

Poor doll's dressmaker! How often so dragged down by hands that should
have raised her up; how often so misdirected when losing her way on the
eternal road, and asking guidance! Poor, poor little doll's dressmaker!

Chapter 3

A PIECE OF WORK

Britannia, sitting meditating one fine day (perhaps in the attitude in
which she is presented on the copper coinage), discovers all of a sudden
that she wants Veneering in Parliament. It occurs to her that Veneering
is 'a representative man'--which cannot in these times be doubted--and
that Her Majesty's faithful Commons are incomplete without him. So,
Britannia mentions to a legal gentleman of her acquaintance that if
Veneering will 'put down' five thousand pounds, he may write a couple
of initial letters after his name at the extremely cheap rate of two
thousand five hundred per letter. It is clearly understood between
Britannia and the legal gentleman that nobody is to take up the five
thousand pounds, but that being put down they will disappear by magical
conjuration and enchantment.

The legal gentleman in Britannia's confidence going straight from that
lady to Veneering, thus commissioned, Veneering decla