f expected to find the furniture sold and Mrs
Jupp gone, but it was not so; with all her faults the poor old woman was
perfectly honest.

I told her that Pryer had taken all Ernest's money and run away with it.
She hated Pryer. "I never knew anyone," she exclaimed, "as white-livered
in the face as that Pryer; he hasn't got an upright vein in his whole
body. Why, all that time when he used to come breakfasting with Mr
Pontifex morning after morning, it took me to a perfect shadow the way he
carried on. There was no doing anything to please him right. First I
used to get them eggs and bacon, and he didn't like that; and then I got
him a bit of fish, and he didn't like that, or else it was too dear, and
you know fish is dearer than ever; and then I got him a bit of German,
and he said it rose on him; then I tried sausages, and he said they hit
him in the eye worse even than German; oh! how I used to wander my room
and fret about it inwardly and cry for hours, and all about them paltry
breakfasts--and it wasn't Mr Pontifex; he'd like anything that anyone
chose to give him.

"And so the piano's to go," she continued. "What beautiful tunes Mr
Pontifex did play upon it, to be sure; and there was one I liked better
than any I ever heard. I was in the room when he played it once and when
I said, 'Oh, Mr Pontifex, that's the kind of woman I am,' he said, 'No,
Mrs Jupp, it isn't, for this tune is old, but no one can say you are
old.' But, bless you, he meant nothing by it, it was only his mucky
flattery."

Like myself, she was vexed at his getting married. She didn't like his
being married, and she didn't like his not being married--but, anyhow, it
was Ellen's fault, not his, and she hoped he would be happy. "But after
all," she concluded, "it ain't you and it ain't me, and it ain't him and
it ain't her. It's what you must call the fortunes of matterimony, for
there ain't no other word for it."

In the course of the afternoon the furniture arrived at Ernest's new
abode. In the first floor we placed the piano, table, pictures,
bookshelves, a couple of arm-chairs, and all the little household gods
which he had brought from Cambridge. The back room was furnished exactly
as his bedroom at Ashpit Place had been--new things being got for the
bridal apartment downstairs. These two first-floor rooms I insisted on
retaining as my own, but Ernest was to use them whenever he pleased; he
was never to sublet even the bedroom,