e times," he growled. "He's
forty-seven if he's a day; 'is left leg is shorter than 'is right, and
he talks with a stutter. When she's with 'im you'd think as butter
wouldn't melt in 'er mouth; but the way she talked to me just now you'd
think I was paid a-purpose to wait on her. I asked 'er at last wot she
thought I was here for, and she said she didn't know, and nobody else
neither. And afore she went off she told the potman from the 'Albion,'
wot was listening, that I was known all over Wapping as the Sleeping
Beauty.

"She ain't the fust I've 'ad words with, not by a lot. They're all the
same; they all start in a nice, kind, soapy sort o' way, and, as soon as
they don't get wot they want, fly into a temper and ask me who, I think I
am. I told one woman once not to be silly, and I shall never forget it
as long as I live-never. For all I know, she's wearing a bit o' my 'air
in a locket to this day, and very likely boasting that I gave it to her.

"Talking of her reminds me of another woman. There was a Cap'n Pinner,
used to trade between 'ere and Hull on a schooner named the Snipe. Nice
little craft she was, and 'e was a very nice feller. Many and many's the
pint we've 'ad together, turn and turn-about, and the on'y time we ever
'ad a cross word was when somebody hid his clay pipe in my beer and 'e
was foolish enough to think I'd done it.

"He 'ad a nice little cottage, 'e told me about, near Hull, and 'is
wife's father, a man of pretty near seventy, lived with 'em. Well-off
the old man was, and, as she was his only daughter, they looked to 'ave
all his money when he'd gorn. Their only fear was that 'e might marry
agin, and, judging from wot 'e used to tell me about the old man, I
thought it more than likely.

"'If it wasn't for my missis he'd ha' been married over and over agin,'
he ses one day. 'He's like a child playing with gunpowder.'

"''Ow would it be to let 'im burn hisself a bit?' I ses.

"'If you was to see some o' the gunpowder he wants to play with, you
wouldn't talk like that,' ses the cap'n. 'You'd know better. The on'y
thing is to keep 'em apart, and my pore missis is wore to a shadder
a-doing of it.'

"It was just about a month arter that that he brought the old man up to
London with 'im. They 'ad some stuff to put out at Smith's Wharf,
t'other side of the river, afore they came to us, and though they was
on'y there four or five days, it was long enough for that old man to get
i