wn to spare, but anyhow
she did try Caroline though that was no excuse. So one afternoon
Caroline comes down into the kitchen flushed and flashing, and she says
to me "Mrs. Lirriper that woman in the first has aggravated me past
bearing," I says "Caroline keep your temper," Caroline says with a
curdling laugh "Keep my temper? You're right Mrs. Lirriper, so I will.
Capital D her!" bursts out Caroline (you might have struck me into the
centre of the earth with a feather when she said it) "I'll give her a
touch of the temper that _I_ keep!" Caroline downs with her hair my
dear, screeches and rushes up-stairs, I following as fast as my trembling
legs could bear me, but before I got into the room the dinner-cloth and
pink-and-white service all dragged off upon the floor with a crash and
the new-married couple on their backs in the firegrate, him with the
shovel and tongs and a dish of cucumber across him and a mercy it was
summer-time. "Caroline" I says "be calm," but she catches off my cap and
tears it in her teeth as she passes me, then pounces on the new-married
lady makes her a bundle of ribbons takes her by the two ears and knocks
the back of her head upon the carpet Murder screaming all the time
Policemen running down the street and Wozenham's windows (judge of my
feelings when I came to know it) thrown up and Miss Wozenham calling out
from the balcony with crocodile's tears "It's Mrs. Lirriper been
overcharging somebody to madness--she'll be murdered--I always thought
so--Pleeseman save her!" My dear four of them and Caroline behind the
chiffoniere attacking with the poker and when disarmed prize-fighting
with her double fists, and down and up and up and down and dreadful! But
I couldn't bear to see the poor young creature roughly handled and her
hair torn when they got the better of her, and I says "Gentlemen
Policemen pray remember that her sex is the sex of your mothers and
sisters and your sweethearts, and God bless them and you!" And there she
was sitting down on the ground handcuffed, taking breath against the
skirting-board and them cool with their coats in strips, and all she says
was "Mrs. Lirriper I'm sorry as ever I touched you, for you're a kind
motherly old thing," and it made me think that I had often wished I had
been a mother indeed and how would my heart have felt if I had been the
mother of that girl! Well you know it turned out at the Police-office
that she had done it before, and she had her