“What's the use of your lying groaning there in that manner? That won't make me hold my tongue, I can tell you. You think to have it all your own way--but you won't, Mr. Caudle! You can insult my dinner; look like a demon, I may say, at a wholesome piece of cold mutton--ha! the thousands of far better creatures than you are who'd been thankful for that mutton!--and I'm never to speak! But you 're mistaken--I will! Your usage of me, Mr. Caudle, is infamous--unworthy of a man. I only wish people knew you for what you are; but they shall, some day. “Puddings! And now I suppose I shall hear of nothing but puddings! Yes, and I know what it would end in. First, you'd have a pudding every day;--oh, I know your extravagance--then you'd go for fish--then I shouldn't wonder if you'd have soup; turtle, no doubt: then you'd go for a dessert; and--oh! I see it all as plain as the quilt before me--but no! not while I live! What your second wife may do, I don't know; perhaps she'll be a fine lady; but you shan't be ruined by me, Mr. Caudle; that I'm determined. Puddings, indeed! Pu-dding-s! Pudd--” “Exhausted nature,” says Caudle, “could hold no longer. Here my wife went to sleep.” LECTURE VIII. CAUDLE HAS BEEN MADE A MASON.--MRS. CAUDLE INDIGNANT AND CURIOUS. “Now, Mr. Caudle--Mr. Caudle, I say: oh! you can't be asleep already, I know--Now, what I mean to say is this; there's no use, none at all, in our having any disturbance about the matter; but, at last my mind's made up, Mr. Caudle; I shall leave you. Either I know all you've been doing to-night, or to-morrow morning I quit the house. No, no; there's an end of the marriage-state, I think--an end of all confidence between man and wife--if a husband's to have secrets and keep 'em all to himself. Pretty secrets they must be, when his own wife can't know 'em. Not fit for any decent person to know, I'm sure, if that's the case. Now, Caudle, don't let us quarrel; there's a good soul, tell me what's it all about? A pack of nonsense, I dare say; still--not that I care much about it--still, I _should_ like to know. There's a dear: Eh? Oh, don't tell me there's nothing in it; I know better. I'm not a fool, Mr. Caudle; I know there's a good deal in it. Now, Caudle, just tell me a little bit of it. I'm sure I'd tell you anything. You know I would. Well? “Caudle, you're enough to vex a saint! Now, don't you think you're going to sleep; because you 're not. Do you suppose I'd ever suffered you to go and be made a mason, if I didn't suppose I was to know the secret, too? Not that it's anything to know, I dare say; and that s why I'm determined to know it.