I declare to goodness, there was no keeping the woman away from the door as soon as she heard those husky vagabonds in the street, shouting away at the top of their cracked post-horn voices, all at once, “The full, true, and particular account” of some cock-and-a-bull-story or other; and whether it was the “as-sas-si-nation of Lew-is Philip, the King of the French,” (I’m sure those screaming scoundrels used to assassinate that poor, dear old man at least two or three times a month in our neighbourhood all the winter through,) or whether it was the “full disclosures of an elopement of a certain pretty milliner, not a hundred miles from these parts, with a well-known sporting nobleman, together with authentic copies of all the love-letters found in a silver cigar-case, which was picked up this morning by a respectable butcher in High-street,” or indeed no matter what it was, my Miss Betsy was sure to invest a penny in the rubbish, although directly I told her to let me see the nonsense that she had been stupid enough to go wasting her money about, of course, I used to find that it had nothing at all to do with what the fellows had been crying, and was merely some trumped-up rigmarole story, that would have done just as well for York as it did for Camden Town--a pack of wicked scoundrels coming up, three at a time, at the dusk of evening, alarming a quiet neighbourhood, and frightening one out of one’s wits by bawling their wicked stories out all of a sudden right under one’s window, and robbing the poor maids, who are sure to buy their rubbish, and imposing upon the mistresses, who are certain to read it. As for the “new and popular songs,” too, it’s impossible to say how many miles of ballads that Betsy must have bought in her time, at three yards for a halfpenny. Positively, if the drawers in the dresser were not crammed with her “CHERRY RIPES,” and her “MISTLETOE BOUGHS,” and her “OLD ARM CHAIRS,” and her “CORK LEGS,” and a pack of other stuff, as full as they could hold, with the stupid engravings at the top of some of them, that had nothing at all to do with the song, for I declare if there wasn’t a ship in full sail put as an illustration to “AWAY, AWAY, TO THE MOUNTAIN’S BROW!” and a trumpery shepherdess, playing on a pipe to two grubby little lambs, as the picture of “WANTED! A GOVERNESS!” However, to come back to my gooseberry pudding and my weaning. Well, thanks to that dear good mother of mine, I got the weaning all over so nicely the reader can’t tell, though, I’m sorry to say that, thanks to that beauty of a Betsy of mine, the gooseberry pudding with the wood in it, that I had set my heart upon having so, wasn’t fit to have been set before a pig, let alone a respectable married female like myself--Augh! I declare I’ve got the taste of it in my mouth to this very day.