_[The other passengers strive to dissemble a frantic desire to know how and why this delicate operation was performed._ Second Girl (mysteriously)_. And enough too! But what put GEORGE off most was her keeping that bag so quiet. _[The general imagination is once more stirred to its depths by this mysterious allusion._ _First Girl._ Yes, he did feel that, I know, he used to come and go on about it to me by the hour together. "I shouldn't have minded so much," he told me over and over again, with the tears standing in his eyes,--"if it hadn't been that the bottles was all silver-mounted!" _Second Girl._ Silver-mounted? I never heard of _that_ before--no wonder he felt hurt! _First Girl (impressively)._ Silver tops to everyone of them--and that girl to turn round as she did, and her with an Uncle in the oil and colour line, too--it nearly broke GEORGE'S 'art! _Second Girl_. He's such a one to take on about things--but, as I said to him, "GEORGE," I says, "You must remember it might have been worse. Suppose you'd been married to that girl, and _then_ found out about ALF and the Jubilee sixpence--how would _that_ have been?" _First Girl (unconsciously acting as the mouth-piece of the other passengers)._ And what did he say to _that?_ _Second Girl._ Oh, nothing--there was nothing he _could_ say, but I could see he was struck. She behaved very mean to the last--she wouldn't send back the German concertina. _First Girl._ You don't say so! Well, I wouldn't have thought that of her, bad as she is. _Second Girl._ No, she stuck to it that it wasn't like a regular present, being got through a grocer, and as she couldn't send him back the tea, being drunk,--but did you hear how she treated EMMA over the crinoline 'at she got for her? _First Girl (to the immense relief of the rest)._ No, what was that? _Second Girl._ Well, I had it from EMMA her own self. ELIZA wrote up to her and says, in a postscript like,--Why, this is Tottenham Court Road, I get out here. Good-bye, dear, I must tell you the rest another day. _[Gets out, leaving the tantalised audience inconsolable, and longing for courage to question her companion as to the precise details of_ ELIZA'S _heartless behaviour to_ GEORGE. _The companion, however, relapses into a stony reserve. Enter a_ Chatty Old Gentleman _who has no secrets from anybody, and of course selects as the first recipient of his confidence the one person who hates to be talked to in an omnibus._ _The Chatty O.G._ I've just been having a talk with the policeman at the corner there--what do you think I said to him? _His Opposite Neighbour._ I--I really don't know. _The C.O.G._ Well, I told him he was a rich man compared to me. He said, "I only get thirty shillings a week, Sir." "Ah," I said, "but look at your expenses, compared to mine. What would _you_ do if you had to spend eight hundred a year on your children's education? I spend that--every penny of it, Sir.