"`Cook,' she says, `Cook, it ain't the cake as is tipsy-cake, it's summit else;' and me a-sitting in that blessed chair, aside of the fire, feeling as if all the use was took outer my legs, when I only just put my lips to the sherry, just to see if it was good enough for the sponge-cake, as I took so much pains to make, tho' it did get burnt at the bakehouse to that degree that I was obleeged to cut quite a lunch off all round. But I wouldn't bemean myself to speak; for `Martha,' I says to myself, `Martha Jinks,' I says, `if you are a cook, you are a sooperior woman, and with your egsperiens, you needn't take sauce from any one.' So I sat looking at her that disdainful that it quite brought on a sort of sterrical hiccups, and then, I couldn't help it, she went on so cruelly, I melted into tears, and there they was a-dripping-- dripping--dripping all over the kidgin, and the missus a-going on still at that rate that I couldn't abear it, and fainted away so that they had to carry me upstairs to bed, and bumped my pore head agen the ballisters, so that it ached fearful next morning, and I was obliged to have the least sup of g--, you know, in a wine-glass, took medicinally, you know, for if there is any mortial thing in this life as _is_ disgusting it's a woman as takes to sperrits. "But, there, I wouldn't stay. I couldn't, bless you; for, as I says to Mary, `Mary,' I says, `you may lead me with a bit o' darning-cotton, but clothes-line wouldn't pull me.' Oh, no, I couldn't have put up with it if missus had gone down on her bended knees in the sand on my beautiful white kidgin floor, and begged of me to stay. Oh, no--I give warning there and then. `A month's wages or a month's warning,' I says, and she give me the month's wages, and said I was to get out of the cruel house. "And then I went to live with some common people, who had just built themselves a new house out by the Crischial Pallus, and there I stopped three months, till I was a'most worn to skin and bone, with the worry, and bother, and want of rest. "First night I goes there, and takes my trunk, and a bundle, and a bonnet-box, and a basket, I might have known as all would go wrong, for the cabman sauced me to that degree it was orful; but I got rid of him at last, with my boxes a-standing outside the willa gate, out in the rain; and then no lights in the house, and no gash laid on, and no one to help me in with my things, and me a-going mosh--posh, pudge--mudge up the the soft gravel, and losing my gloshes a-sticking in the wet muddy stuff, and the wind a-blowing to that degree as my umbrelly--a bran new alpakky--was bust right down one of its ribs, and caught in the iron railings; while all the while I knowed as the rain was a-getting in to my best bonnet, and a man a-tumbling over my big box, as stood out in the roadway-path, and me without strength in my lines to pull it in the gate.