room. 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 John, 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 John, 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!
