"WHO TOLD PEOPLE YOU'D A FALSE FRONT TOOTH? "And is that all? Well, I'm sure--as if the world couldn't see it. I know I did just mention it once, but then I thought everybody knew it--besides, I was aggravated to do it; yes, aggravated. I remember it was that very day, at Mrs. Badgerly's, when husbands' whiskers came up. Well, after we'd done with them, somebody said something about teeth. Whereupon, Miss Prettyman--a minx! she was born to destroy the peace of families, I know she was: she was there; and if I'd only known that such a creature was--no I'm not rambling, not at all, and I'm coming to the tooth. To be sure, this is a great deal you've got against me, isn't it? Well, somebody spoke about teeth, when Miss Prettyman, with one of her insulting leers, said 'she thought Mr. Caudle had the whitest teeth she ever HAD beheld.' Of course my blood was up--every wife's would be: and I believe I might have said, 'Yes, they were well enough; but when a young lady so very much praised a married man's teeth, she perhaps didn't know that one of the front ones was an elephant's.' Like her impudence!--I set HER down for the rest of the evening. But I can see the humour you're in to-night. You only came to bed to quarrel, and I'm not going to indulge you. All I say is this, after the shameful mischief you've made at the Badgerlys', you never break my confidence again. Never-- and now you know it." Caudle hereupon writes--"And here she seemed inclined to sleep. Not for one moment did I think to prevent her." LECTURE XXXII--MRS. CAUDLE DISCOURSES OF MAIDS-OF-ALL-WORK AND MAIDS IN GENERAL. MR. CAUDLE'S "INFAMOUS BEHAVIOUR" TEN YEARS AGO "There now, it isn't my intention to say a word to-night, Mr. Caudle. No; I want to go to sleep, if I can; for after what I've gone through to-day, and with the headache I've got,--and if I haven't left my smelling-salts on the mantelpiece, on the right-hand corner just as you go into the room--nobody could miss it--I say, nobody could miss it--in a little green bottle, and--well, there you lie like a stone, and I might perish and you wouldn't move. Oh, my poor head! But it may open and shut, and what do you care?