cried: she tried to prevent herself from doing so at first, but she fairly burst into tears.
"My dear—dear child," says I, seizing her hand, "you don't suppose I fancy you"
"No—no!" she says, drawing the large hand over her eyes. "No—no! but I saw it when you and Mr. Warrington last 'ad some. Oh! do have a patting lock!"
"A patent lock, my dear?" I remarked. "How odd that you, who have learned to pronounce Italian and French words so well, should make such strange slips in English? Your mother speaks well enough."
"She was born a lady. She was not sent to be a milliner's girl, as I was, and then among those noisy girls at that—oh! that place!" cries Bessy, in a sort of desperation clenching her hand.
Here the bells of St. Beak's began to ring quite cheerily for evening service. I heard "Elizabeth!" cried out from lower regions by Mrs. Prior's cracked voice. And the maiden went her way to Church, which she and her mother never missed of a Sunday; and I daresay I slept just as well without the brandy-and-water.
Slumley being gone, Mrs. Prior came to me rather wistfully one day, and wanted to know whether I would object to Madame Bentivoglio, the opera-singer, having the first floor? This was too much, indeed! How was my work to go on with that woman practising all day and roaring underneath me? But after sending away so good a customer, I could not refuse to lend the Priors a little more money; and Prior insisted upon treating me to a new stamp, and making out a new and handsome bill for an amount nearly twice as great as the last: which he had no doubt under heaven, and which he pledged his honour as an officer and a gentleman that he would meet. Let me see: That was how many years ago?—Thirteen, fourteen, twenty? Never mind. My fair Elizabeth, I think if you saw your poor old father's signature now, you would pay it. I came upon it lately in an old box I haven't opened these fifteen years, along with some letters written—never mind by whom—and an old glove that I used to set an absurd value by; and that emerald-green tabinet waistcoat which kind old Mrs. Macmanus gave me, and which I wore at the L—d L—t—nt's ball, Ph-n-x Park, Dublin, once, when I danced with her there! Lord!—Lord! It would no more meet round my waist now than round Daniel Lambert's. How we outgrow things!
But as I never presented this united bill of 43l. odd (the first portion of 23l., &c. was advanced by me in order to pay an execution out of the house),—as I never expected to have it paid any more than I did to be Lord Mayor of London,—I say it was a little hard that Mrs. Prior should write off to her brother (she writes a capital letter), blessing Providence that had given him a noble income, promising him the benefit of her prayers, in order that he should long live to enjoy his large salary, and informing him that an obdurate creditor, who shall be nameless (meaning me), who had Captain Prior in his power (as if being in possession of that
