ain everything, and you,
too, you jackdaw, if any one would buy you, which they won't! I'll have
my rent at last: I've been too easy with you, you ungrateful chap; for,
mark, even Gripe this morning says, 'Haven't you a gentleman lodger up
above? get him to pay you your own,' says he; and so I will. I'm sick of
all this, and I'll have my rights! Here's my son, Jem, a far
better-looking chap than you, though he _hasn't_ got hair like a sandy
mop all under his chin, and he's obligated for to work from one week's
end to another, in a paper cap and fustian jacket; and you--you painted
jackanapes! But now I have got you, and I'll turn you inside out, though
I know there's nothing in you! But I'll try to get at your fine coats,
and spurs, and trousers, your chains and pins, and make something of
them before I've done with you, you jack-a-dandy!"--and the virago shook
her fist at him, looking as though she had not yet uttered even half
that was in her heart towards him.

[Alas, alas, unhappy Titmouse, much-enduring son of sorrow! I perceive
that you now feel the sharpness of an angry female tongue; and indeed to
me, not in the least approving of the many coarse and heart-splitting
expressions which she uses, it seems, nevertheless, that she hath not
gone exceeding far off the mark in much that she hath said; for, in
truth, in your conduct there is not a little that to me, piteously
inclined towards you as I am, yet appeareth obnoxious to the edge of
this woman's reproaches. But think not, O bewildered and
not-with-sufficient-distinctness-discerning-the-nature-of-things
Titmouse! that she hath only a sharp and bitter tongue. In this woman
behold a mother, and it may be that she will soften before you, who
have plainly, as I hear, neither father nor mother. Oh me!]

Poor Titmouse trembled violently; his lips quivered; and the long
pent-up tears forced their way at length over his eyelids, and fell fast
down his cheeks.

"Ah, you may well cry!--you may! But it's too late!--it's my turn to cry
now! Don't you think that I feel for my own flesh and blood, which is my
six children? And isn't what's mine theirs? And aren't you keeping the
fatherless out of their own? It's too bad of you--it is! and you know it
is," continued Mrs. Squallop, vehemently.

"_They've_ got a mother--a kind--good--mother--to take--care of them,"
sobbed Titmouse; "but there's been no one in the--the--world that cares
a straw for _me_--this twenty--years!"