Page:Mrs Caudle's curtain lectures.djvu/166

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130
MRS. CAUDLE'S CURTAIN LECTURES.

at; but you always laugh when I say anything. Sometimes at the sea-side—especially when the tide's down—I feel so happy: quite as if I could cry.

"When shall I get the things ready? For next Sunday?

"What will it cost?

"Oh, there—don't talk of it. No: we won't go. I shall send for the painters to-morrow. What?

"I can go and take the children, and you'll stay?

"No, sir: you go with me, or I don't stir. I'm not going to be turned loose like a hen with her chickens, and nobody to protect me. So we'll go on Monday? Eh?

"What will it cost?

"What a man you are! Why, Caudle, I've been reckoning that, with buff slippers and all, we can't well do it under seventy pounds. No; I won't take away the slippers and say fifty. It's seventy pounds and no less. Of course, what's over will be so much saved. Caudle, what a man you are! Well, shall we go on Monday? What do you say——

"You'll see?

"There's a dear. Then, Monday."


"Anything for a chance of peace," writes Caudle. "I consented to the trip, for I thought I might sleep better in a change of bed."