"A nice little house and a garden! I know it--I was born for a garden! There's something about it makes one feel so innocent. My heart somehow always opens and shuts at roses. And then what nice currant wine we could make! And again, get 'em as fresh as you will, there's no radishes like your own radishes! They're ten times as sweet! What? "AND TWENTY TIMES AS DEAR? "Yes; there you go! Anything that I fancy, you always bring up the expense. "No, Mr. Caudle, I should not be tired of it in a month. I tell you I was made for the country. But here you've kept me--and much you've cared about my health--here you've kept me in this filthy London, that I hardly know what grass is made of. Much you care for your wife and family to keep 'em here to be all smoked like bacon. I can see it--it's stopping the children's growth; they'll be dwarfs, and have their father to thank for it. If you'd the heart of a parent, you couldn't bear to look at their white faces. Dear little Dick! he makes no breakfast. What! "HE ATE SIX SLICES THIS MORNING? "A pretty father you must be to count 'em. But that's nothing to what the dear child could do, if, like other children, he'd a fair chance. "Ha! and when we could be so comfortable! But it's always the case, you never will be comfortable with me. How nice and fresh you'd come up to business every morning; and what pleasure it would be for me to put a tulip or a pink in your button-hole, just, as I may say, to ticket you from the country. "But then, Caudle, you never were like any other man! But I know why you won't leave London. Yes, I know. Then, you think, you couldn't go to your filthy club--that's it. Then you'd be obliged to be at home, like any other decent man. Whereas you might, if you liked, enjoy yourself under your own apple-tree, and I'm sure I should never say anything about your tobacco out of doors. My only wish is to make you happy, Caudle, and you won't let me do it. "You don't speak, love? Shall I look about a house to-morrow? It will be a broken day with me, for I'm going out to have little pet's ears bored--What? "YOU WON'T HAVE HER EARS BORED? "And why not, I should like to know? "IT'S A BARBAROUS, SAVAGE CUSTOM? "Oh, Mr. Caudle! the sooner you go away from the world, and live in a cave, the better. You're getting not fit for Christian society. What next? My ears were bored and--What? "SO ARE YOURS? "I know what you mean--but that's nothing to do with it. My ears, I say, were bored, and so were dear mother's, and grandmother's before her; and I suppose there were no more savages in our family than in yours, Mr. Caudle? Besides,--why should little pet's ears go naked any more than any of her sisters'? They wear earrings; you never objected before. What? "YOU'VE LEARNED BETTER NOW?