"And now, everybody that's arrested will of course send to you. Yes, Mr. Caudle, you'll have your hands full now, no doubt of it. You'll soon know every sponging-house and every sheriff's officer in London. Your business will have to take care of itself; you'll have enough to do to run from lawyer to lawyer after the business of other people. Now, it's no use calling me a dear soul--not a bit! No; and I shan't put it off till to-morrow. It isn't often I speak, but I WILL speak now. "I wish that Prettyman had been at the bottom of the sea before-- what? "IT ISN'T PRETTYMAN? "Ah! it's very well for you to say so; but I know it is; it's just like him. He looks like a man that's always in debt--that's always in a sponging-house. Anybody might swear it. I knew it from the very first time you brought him here--from the very night he put his nasty dirty wet boots on my bright steel fender. Any woman could see what the fellow was in a minute. Prettyman! a pretty gentleman, truly, to be robbing your wife and family! "Why couldn't you let him stop in the sponging--Now don't call upon heaven in that way, and ask me to be quiet, for I won't. Why couldn't you let him stop there? He got himself in; he might have got himself out again. And you must keep me awake, ruin my sleep, my health, and for what you care, my peace of mind. Ha! everybody but you can see how I'm breaking. You can do all this while you're talking with a set of low bailiffs! A great deal you must think of your children to go into a lawyer's office. "And then you must be bail--you must be bound--for Mr. Prettyman! You may say, bound! Yes--you've your hands nicely tied, now. How he laughs at you--and serve you right! Why, in another week he'll be in the East Indies; of course he will! And you'll have to pay his debts; yes, your children may go in rags, so that Mr. Prettyman--what do you say? "IT ISN'T PRETTYMAN? "I know better. Well, if it isn't Prettyman that's kept you out,--if it isn't Prettyman you're bail for--who is it, then? I ask, who is it, then? What? "MY BROTHER? BROTHER TOM? "Oh, Caudle! dear Caudle--" "It was too much for the poor soul," says Caudle; "she sobbed as if her heart would break, and I--" and here the MS. is blotted, as though Caudle himself had dropped tears as he wrote. LECTURE XVI--BABY IS TO BE CHRISTENED; MRS. CAUDLE CANVASSES THE MERITS OF PROBABLE GODFATHERS "Come, now, love, about baby's name? The dear thing's three months old, and not a name to its back yet. There you go again! Talk of it to-morrow! No; we'll talk of it to-night. There's no having a word with you in the daytime--but here you can't leave me. Now don't say you wish you could, Caudle; that's unkind, and not treating a wife-- especially the wife to you--as she deserves. It isn't often that I speak but I DO believe you'd like never to hear the sound of my voice. I might as well have been born dumb!