I told Susan I was _very_ much pleased with what she had done, and I gave her five shillings, and said she might go out for a holiday as soon as she liked, adding, that she had in a very clever manner given the impudent fellows a good deal more than they sent, and in a way that not only showed she was one too many for them, but would teach them never again to go making love to the child for the sake of the maid. When Edward came home, he was as pleased as Punch. He declared it just served the lawyers right, and was a bit of sharp practice that did Susan much credit. And then he made a very good pun upon it, for he said that he had a very great mind to go down and stick a board up in the gardens opposite the window of the young fellow to whom Susan had handed the innocent creature, with “Lambs taken in to _Gray’s Inn_ here,” painted in large letters upon it. CHAPTER IX. HOW, WHAT WITH ONE THING AND ANOTHER, IT REALLY IS A MERCY THAT I WAS NOT IN MY GRAVE LONG AGO. “For there’s nae luck about the house, There’s nae luck at a’, There’s little pleasure in the house,” &c. “THERE’S NAE LUCK ABOUT THE HOUSE.” Positively I was no sooner out of one scrape, than, as sure as the next day came round, I was safe to be in another. The beauty of it was, too, that my unlucky stars (and having been born under Saturn, the reader may well imagine that I’ve had no very pleasant time of it) seemed determined I should invariably be the victim of other people’s misdemeanours. For I always thought that that old quack of a Mrs. Yapp would be the death of some of us, with her filthy medicines, and so she nearly was--indeed, it’s quite a mercy that the whole house wasn’t dead and buried long ago. I think I mentioned somewhere before, that the old hen had got four hundred a year, but positively, if it had only been five-and-twenty, she couldn’t have been stingier than she was. I never knew her give a penny away to a soul, and as for making any present to my dear little Kitty-pitty, bless you, not even so much as a mere six-and-sixpenny coral and bells did she give the angel, and which I thought was the very least she could have done, after we had been keeping her in the handsome way we had, without expecting the least return for it. If she could save a farthing she would walk her legs off; indeed, I’ve known her go miles just to get a thing a halfpenny a pound cheaper, though she must have worn out at least sixpenny-worth of shoe leather in the journey.