--a--your vanity, Madam, you should have said, my dear."

"Don't talk that way to me--to me--you brute; you know----"

"I know all about it, my dear."

"_My dear_--bah!" said the lady; "my _dear!_ save that, Mr. Jipson, for
some of your--a--a----"

What Mrs. J. might have said, we scarce could judge; but Jipson just
then put in a "rejoinder" calculated to prevent the umpullaceous tone of
Mrs. J.'s remarks, by saying, in a very humble strain--

"Mrs. Jipson, don't make an ass of yourself: we are too old to act like
goslings, and too well acquainted, I hope, with the matters-of-fact of
every-day life, to quarrel about things beyond our reach or control."

"If you talk of things beyond your control, Mr. Jipson, I mean beyond
your reach, that your income will not permit us to live as other people
live----"

"I wouldn't like to," interposed Jipson.

"What?" asked Mrs. Jipson.

"Live like other people--that is, some people, Mrs. Jipson, that I know
of."

"You don't suppose _I'm_ going to bury myself and my poor girls in this
big house, and have those servants standing about me, their fingers in
their mouths, with nothing to do but----"

"But what?"

"But cook, and worry, and slave, and keep shut up for a----"

"For what?"

"For a--a----"

But Mrs. J. was stuck. Jipson saw that; he divined what a _point_ Mrs.
J. was about to, but could not conscientiously make, so he relieved her
with--

"My dear Betsey, it's a popular fallacy, an exploded idea, a
contemptible humbug, to live merely for your neighbors, the rabble world
at large. Thousands do it, my dear, and I've no objection to their doing
it; it's their own business, and none of mine. I have moved up town
because I thought it would be more pleasant; I bought a modest kind of
family carriage because I could afford it, and believed it would add to
our recreations and health; the carriage and horses required care; I
engaged a man to attend to them, fix up the garden, and be useful
generally, and added a girl or two to your domestic departments, in
order to lighten your own cares, &c. Now, all this, my dear woman, you
ought to know, rests a very important responsibility upon my shoulders,
health, life, and--two thousand dollars a year, and if you imagine it
compatible with common sense, or consonant with my judgment, to make an
ass or fool of myself, by going into the extravagances and tom-fooleries
of Tannersoil, our neighbor over the way, who happens for t