"Yes, Mr. Caudle, you'll be nice and ill in the morning! But don't you think I'm going to let you have your breakfast in bed, like Mrs. Prettyman. I'll not be such a fool. No; nor I won't have discredit brought upon the house by sending for soda-water early, for all the neighbourhood to say, 'Caudle was drunk last night.' No: I've some regard for the dear children, if you haven't. No: nor you shan't have broth for dinner. Not a neck of mutton crosses my threshold, I can tell you. "YOU WON'T WANT SODA, AND YOU WON'T WANT BROTH? All the better. You wouldn't get 'em if you did, I can assure you.--Dear, dear, dear! That filthy tobacco! I'm sure it's enough to make me as bad as you are. Talking about getting divorced,--I'm sure tobacco ought to be good grounds. How little does a woman think, when she marries, that she gives herself up to be poisoned! You men contrive to have it all of your own side, you do. Now if I was to go and leave you and the children, a pretty noise there'd be! You, however, can go and smoke no end of pipes and--YOU DIDN'T SMOKE? It's all the same, Mr. Caudle, if you go among smoking people. Folks are known by their company. You'd better smoke yourself, than bring home the pipes of all the world. "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 riffraff 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.