"Like enough!" returned Mrs. Lobkins,--"like enough! She was always a favourite of mine, for she had a spuret [spirit] as big as my own; and she paid her rint like a decent body, for all she was out of her sinses, or 'nation like it." "Ay, I _knows_ as how you liked her,--'cause vy? 'T is not your vay to let a room to a voman! You says as how 't is not respectable, and you only likes men to wisit the Mug!" "And I doesn't like all of them as comes here!" answered the dame,--"'specially for Paul's sake; but what can a lone 'oman do? Many's the gentleman highwayman wot comes here, whose money is as good as the clerk's of the parish. And when a bob [shilling] is in my hand, what does it sinnify whose hand it was in afore?" "That's what I call being sinsible and _practical_," said Dummie, approvingly. "And after all, though you 'as a mixture like, I does not know a halehouse where a cove is better entertained, nor meets of a Sunday more illegant company, than the Mug!" Here the conversation, which the reader must know had been sustained in a key inaudible to a third person, received a check from Mr. Peter MacGrawler, who, having finished his revery and his tankard, now rose to depart. First, however, approaching Mrs. Lobkins, he observed that he had gone on credit for some days, and demanded the amount of his bill. Glancing towards certain chalk hieroglyphics inscribed on the wall at the other side of the fireplace, the dame answered that Mr. MacGrawler was indebted to her for the sum of one shilling and ninepence three farthings. After a short preparatory search in his waistcoat pockets, the critic hunted into one corner a solitary half-crown, and having caught it between his finger and thumb, he gave it to Mrs. Lobkins and requested change. As soon as the matron felt her hand anointed with what has been called by some ingenious Johnson of St. Giles's "the oil of palms," her countenance softened into a complacent smile; and when she gave the required change to Mr. MacGrawler, she graciously hoped as how he would recommend the Mug to the public. "That you may be sure of," said the editor of "The Asinaeum." "There is not a place where I am so much at home." With that the learned Scotsman buttoned his coat and went his way. "How spiteful the world be!" said Mrs. Lobkins, after a pause, "'specially if a 'oman keeps a fashionable sort of a public! When Judith died, Joe, the dog's-meat man, said I war all the better for it, and that she left I a treasure to bring up the urchin. One would think a thumper makes a man richer,--'cause why? Every man _thumps!_ I got nothing more than a watch and ten guineas when Judy died, and sure that scarce paid for the burrel [burial]." "You forgits the two quids [Guineas] I giv' you for the hold box of rags,--much of a treasure I found there!" said Dummie, with sycophantic archness.