“Yes, I see how it will be. Now you 've once gone to a tavern, you 'll always be going. You 'll be coming home tipsy every night; and tumbling down and breaking your leg, and putting out your shoulder; and bringing all sorts of disgrace and expense upon us. And then you 'll be getting into a street fight--oh! I know your temper too well to doubt it, Mr. Caudle--and be knocking down some of the police. And then I know what will follow. It _must_ follow. Yes, you 'll be sent for a month or six weeks to the treadmill. Pretty thing that, for a respectable tradesman, Mr. Caudle, to be put upon the treadmill with all sorts of thieves and vagabonds, and--there, again, that horrible tobacco!--and riff-raff of every kind. I should like to know how your children are to hold up their heads, after their father has been upon the treadmill?---- No: I _won't_ go to sleep. And I'm not talking of what's impossible. I know it will all happen--every bit of it. If it wasn't for the dear children, you might be ruined and I wouldn't so much as speak about it, but--oh, dear, dear! at least you might go where they smoke _good_ tobacco--but I can't forget that I'm their mother. At least, they shall have _one_ parent. “Taverns! Never did a man go to a tavern who didn't die a beggar. And how your pot-companions will laugh at you when they see your name in the _Gazette!_ For it _must_ happen. Your business is sure to fall off; for what respectable people will buy toys for their children of a drunkard? You 're not a drunkard! No: but you will be--it's all the same. “You've begun by staying out till midnight. By-and-by 't will be all night. But don't you think, Mr. Caudle, you shall ever have a key. I know you. Yes; you'd do exactly like that Prettyman, and what did he do, only last Wednesday? Why, he let himself in about four in the morning, and brought home with him his pot-companion. His dear wife woke at six, and saw Prettyman's dirty boots at her bed-side. And where was the wretch, her husband? Why, he was drinking down stairs--swilling. Yes; worse than a midnight robber, he'd taken the keys out of his dear wife's pockets--ha! what that poor creature has to bear!--and had got at the brandy. A pretty thing for a wife to wake at six in the morning, and instead of her husband to see his dirty boots! “But I 'll not be made your victim, Mr. Caudle, not I. You shall never get at my keys, for they shall lie under my pillow--under my own head, Mr. Caudle. “You'll be ruined, but if I can help it, you shall ruin nobody but yourself. “Oh! that hor--hor--hor--i--ble tob--ac--co!” LECTURE III. MR. CAUDLE JOINS A CLUB,--“THE SKYLARKS.”