leased as a penny
carrot. She had had such a lovely dinner--a cushion of ham and green
peas. She had had a good cry over it, but then she was so silly, she
was.

"And there's that Bell," she continued, though I could not detect any
appearance of connection, "it's enough to give anyone the hump to see him
now that he's taken to chapel-going, and his mother's prepared to meet
Jesus and all that to me, and now she ain't a-going to die, and drinks
half a bottle of champagne a day, and then Grigg, him as preaches, you
know, asked Bell if I really was too gay, not but what when I was young
I'd snap my fingers at any 'fly by night' in Holborn, and if I was togged
out and had my teeth I'd do it now. I lost my poor dear Watkins, but of
course that couldn't be helped, and then I lost my dear Rose. Silly
faggot to go and ride on a cart and catch the bronchitics. I never
thought when I kissed my dear Rose in Pullen's Passage and she gave me
the chop, that I should never see her again, and her gentleman friend was
fond of her too, though he was a married man. I daresay she's gone to
bits by now. If she could rise and see me with my bad finger, she would
cry, and I should say, 'Never mind, ducky, I'm all right.' Oh! dear,
it's coming on to rain. I do hate a wet Saturday night--poor women with
their nice white stockings and their living to get," etc., etc.

And yet age does not wither this godless old sinner, as people would say
it ought to do. Whatever life she has led, it has agreed with her very
sufficiently. At times she gives us to understand that she is still much
solicited; at others she takes quite a different tone. She has not
allowed even Joe King so much as to put his lips to hers this ten years.
She would rather have a mutton chop any day. "But ah! you should have
seen me when I was sweet seventeen. I was the very moral of my poor dear
mother, and she was a pretty woman, though I say it that shouldn't. She
had such a splendid mouth of teeth. It was a sin to bury her in her
teeth."

I only knew of one thing at which she professes to be shocked. It is
that her son Tom and his wife Topsy are teaching the baby to swear. "Oh!
it's too dreadful awful," she exclaimed, "I don't know the meaning of the
words, but I tell him he's a drunken sot." I believe the old woman in
reality rather likes it.

"But surely, Mrs Jupp," said I, "Tom's wife used not to be Topsy. You
used to speak of her as Pheeb."

"Ah! yes