The day afterwards, I thought something was in the wind, for Miss Susan came to me all of a fluster, and said that she should feel obliged if I would let her have ten shillings in advance. I however very properly gave her to understand that, as she had already had one pound fifteen on account of her next quarter, I shouldn’t do anything of the kind, adding that it really was astonishing to me what on earth she did with all her money. Miss Susan seemed to be dreadfully put out by my refusal, (and well the wicked puss might, from what came out afterwards) for one evening, Edward had just got home from chambers, when he met a man on the door step, and on asking him what he wanted, he said that he wished to speak with the lady who owned the parasol he had brought with him, and which Edward knew very well belonged to Mrs. Yapp. So, when I opened the door, my husband asked the man to step into the parlour, and finding Mrs. Yapp there, told him that that was the lady he wanted. Whereupon the man said he was the head waiter of the Chalk Farm Tavern, and had brought home the parasol that she had left with his missus, on account of her not having money enough to pay the whole of the bill she had incurred when she was there with a life-guardsman. Mrs. Yapp blushed a bright orange right up to her eyes, (for it was impossible for her bilious complexion to blush crimson,) and said that it certainly was her parasol, but how it ever came into the man’s possession she wouldn’t attempt to say; for as to her ever having been inside a tavern with a life-guardsman, it was an abominable, wicked falsehood, that it was, and the man was a scoundrel to dare to come there and try to extort money from her under any such shameful pretences.