have John Crumb. Mrs
Pipkin was a respectable woman in her way, always preferring
respectable lodgers if she could get them;--but bound to live. She gave
Ruby very good advice. Of course if she was 'dead-set' against John
Crumb, that was one thing! But then there was nothing a young woman
should look to so much as a decent house over her head,--and victuals.
'What's all the love in the world, Ruby, if a man can't do for you?'
Ruby declared that she knew somebody who could do for her, and could
do very well for her. She knew what she was about, and wasn't going to
be put off it. Mrs Pipkin's morals were good wearing morals, but she
was not strait-laced. If Ruby chose to manage in her own way about her
lover she must. Mrs Pipkin had an idea that young women in these days
did have, and would have, and must have more liberty than was allowed
when she was young. The world was being changed very fast. Mrs Pipkin
knew that as well as others. And therefore when Ruby went to the
theatre once and again,--by herself as far as Mrs Pipkin knew, but
probably in company with her lover,--and did not get home till past
midnight, Mrs Pipkin said very little about it, attributing such novel
circumstances to the altered condition of her country. She had not
been allowed to go to the theatre with a young man when she had been a
girl,--but that had been in the earlier days of Queen Victoria, fifteen
years ago, before the new dispensation had come. Ruby had never yet
told the name of her lover to Mrs Pipkin, having answered all
inquiries by saying that she was right. Sir Felix's name had never
even been mentioned in Islington till Paul Montague had mentioned it.
She had been managing her own affairs after her own fashion,--not
altogether with satisfaction, but still without interruption; but now
she knew that interference would come. Mr Montague had found her out,
and had told her grandfather's landlord. The Squire would be after
her, and then John Crumb would come, accompanied of course by Mr
Mixet,--and after that, as she said to herself on retiring to the
couch which she shared with two little Pipkins, 'the fat would be in
the fire.'

'Who do you think was at our place yesterday?' said Ruby one evening
to her lover. They were sitting together at a music-hall,--half
music-hall, half theatre, which pleasantly combined the allurements of
the gin-palace, the theatre, and the ball-room, trenching hard on
those of other places. Sir Felix was sm