hem, gave mamma a hundred pounds
when she left me (she had the deuce's own luck, to be sure--much more
than ever fell to ME, I know) and as she said she WOULD try and work for
her living, it was thought best to take a house and let lodgings, which
she did. Our first and second floor paid us four guineas a week, on an
average; and the front parlor and attic made forty pounds more. Mamma
and Eliza used to have the front attic: but I took that, and they slept
in the servants' bedroom. Lizzy had a pretty genius for work, and earned
a guinea a week that way; so that we had got nearly two hundred a year
over the rent to keep house with,--and we got on pretty well. Besides,
women eat nothing: my women didn't care for meat for days together
sometimes,--so that it was only necessary to dress a good steak or so
for me.

Mamma would not think of my continuing in the Post Office. She said
her dear Robert, her husband's son, her gallant soldier, and all that,
should remain at home and be a gentleman--which I was, certainly, though
I didn't find fifty pounds a year very much to buy clothes and be a
gentleman upon. To be sure, mother found me shirts and linen, so that
THAT wasn't in the fifty pounds. She kicked a little at paying the
washing too; but she gave in at last, for I was her dear Bob, you know;
and I'm blest if I could not make her give me the gown off her back.
Fancy! once she cut up a very nice rich black silk scarf, which my
sister Waters sent her, and made me a waistcoat and two stocks of it.
She was so VERY soft, the old lady!

*****

I'd lived in this way for five years or more, making myself content
with my fifty pounds a year (PERHAPS I had saved a little out of it; but
that's neither here nor there). From year's end to year's end I remained
faithful to my dear mamma, never leaving her except for a month or so
in the summer--when a bachelor may take a trip to Gravesend or Margate,
which would be too expensive for a family. I say a bachelor, for the
fact is, I don't know whether I am married or not--never having heard a
word since of the scoundrelly Mrs. Stubbs.

I never went to the public-house before meals: for, with my beggarly
fifty pounds, I could not afford to dine away from home: but there I had
my regular seat, and used to come home PRETTY GLORIOUS, I can tell you.
Then bed till eleven; then breakfast and the newspaper; then a stroll in
Hyde Park or St. James's; then home at half-past three to dinner--when