the door, but what will suit Wozenham's
lower down on the other side of the way will not suit me, Miss Wozenham
having her opinions and me having mine, though when it comes to
systematic underbidding capable of being proved on oath in a court of
justice and taking the form of "If Mrs. Lirriper names eighteen shillings
a week, I name fifteen and six," it then comes to a settlement between
yourself and your conscience, supposing for the sake of argument your
name to be Wozenham, which I am well aware it is not or my opinion of you
would be greatly lowered, and as to airy bedrooms and a night-porter in
constant attendance the less said the better, the bedrooms being stuffy
and the porter stuff.

It is forty years ago since me and my poor Lirriper got married at St.
Clement's Danes, where I now have a sitting in a very pleasant pew with
genteel company and my own hassock, and being partial to evening service
not too crowded. My poor Lirriper was a handsome figure of a man, with a
beaming eye and a voice as mellow as a musical instrument made of honey
and steel, but he had ever been a free liver being in the commercial
travelling line and travelling what he called a limekiln road--"a dry
road, Emma my dear," my poor Lirriper says to me, "where I have to lay
the dust with one drink or another all day long and half the night, and
it wears me Emma"--and this led to his running through a good deal and
might have run through the turnpike too when that dreadful horse that
never would stand still for a single instant set off, but for its being
night and the gate shut and consequently took his wheel, my poor Lirriper
and the gig smashed to atoms and never spoke afterwards. He was a
handsome figure of a man, and a man with a jovial heart and a sweet
temper; but if they had come up then they never could have given you the
mellowness of his voice, and indeed I consider photographs wanting in
mellowness as a general rule and making you look like a new-ploughed
field.

My poor Lirriper being behindhand with the world and being buried at
Hatfield church in Hertfordshire, not that it was his native place but
that he had a liking for the Salisbury Arms where we went upon our
wedding-day and passed as happy a fortnight as ever happy was, I went
round to the creditors and I says "Gentlemen I am acquainted with the
fact that I am not answerable for my late husband's debts but I wish to
pay them for I am his lawful wife and his good name is