Page:Mrs Caudle's curtain lectures.djvu/184

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148
MRS. CAUDLE'S CURTAIN LECTURES.

smuggled about me. Well, I will say it, after the way in which I've been used, if you'd the proper feelings of a man, you wouldn't sleep again for six months. Well, I know there was nobody but women there; but that's nothing to do with it. I'm sure, if I'd been taken up for picking pockets, they couldn't have used me worse. To be treated so—and 'specially by one's own sex!—it's that that aggravates me.

MR. CAUDLE ADMIRES THE FISH-WOMEN.

"And that's all you can say?

"What could you do?

"Why, break open the door; I'm sure you must have heard my voice: you shall never make me believe you couldn't hear that. Whenever I shall sew the strings on again, I can't tell. If they didn't turn me out like a ship in a storm, I'm a sinner! And you laughed!

"You didn't laugh?

"Don't tell me; you laugh when you don't know anything about it; but I do.

"And a pretty place you have brought me to! A most respectable place, I must say! Where the women walk about without any bonnets to their heads, and the fish-girls with their bare legs—well, you don't catch me eating any fish while I'm here.

"Why not?