Boardinghouses -- Fiction; Great Britain -- History -- Victoria, 1837-1901 -- Fiction; Widows -- Fiction
Why there's Wozenham's lower down on the other side of the street. I had
a feeling of much soreness several years respecting what I must still
ever call Miss Wozenham's systematic underbidding and the likeness of the
house in Bradshaw having far too many windows and a most umbrageous and
outrageous Oak which never yet was seen in Norfolk Street nor yet a
carriage and four at Wozenham's door, which it would have been far more
to Bradshaw's credit to have drawn a cab. This frame of mind continued
bitter down to the very afternoon in January last when one of my girls,
Sally Rairyganoo which I still suspect of Irish extraction though family
represented Cambridge, else why abscond with a bricklayer of the Limerick
persuasion and be married in pattens not waiting till his black eye was
decently got round with all the company fourteen in number and one horse
fighting outside on the roof of the vehicle,--I repeat my dear my ill-
regulated state of mind towards Miss Wozenham continued down to the very
afternoon of January last past when Sally Rairyganoo came banging (I can
use no milder expression) into my room with a jump which may be Cambridge
and may not, and said "Hurroo Missis! Miss Wozenham's sold up!" My dear
when I had it thrown in my face and conscience that the girl Sally had
reason to think I could be glad of the ruin of a fellow-creeter, I burst
into tears and dropped back in my chair and I says "I am ashamed of
myself!"
Well! I tried to settle to my tea but I could not do it what with
thinking of Miss Wozenham and her distresses. It was a wretched night
and I went up to a front window and looked over at Wozenham's and as well
as I could make it out down the street in the fog it was the dismallest
of the dismal and not a light to be seen. So at last I save to myself
"This will not do," and I puts on my oldest bonnet and shawl not wishing
Miss Wozenham to be reminded of my best at such a time, and lo and behold
you I goes over to Wozenham's and knocks. "Miss Wozenham at home?" I
says turning my head when I heard the door go. And then I saw it was
Miss Wozenham herself who had opened it and sadly worn she was poor thing
and her eyes all swelled and swelled with crying. "Miss Wozenham" I says
"it is several years since there was a little unpleasantness betwixt us
on the subject of my grandson's cap being down your Airy. I have
overlooked it and I hope you have done the same." "Yes Mrs. Lirriper"
she says in a surprise, "I have." "Then my dear" I says "I should be
glad to come in and speak a word to you." Upon my calling her my dear
Miss Wozenham breaks out a crying most pitiful, and a not unfeeling
elderly person that might have been better shaved in a nightcap with a
hat over it offering a polite apology for the mumps having worked
themselves into his constitution, and also for sending home to his wife
on the bellows which was in his hand as a writing-desk, looks out of the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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