Oh! it was so beautiful to sit there, eating that heavenly cold baked rice-pudding till I was afraid I should make myself ill, and hearing dear mother call me everything that was good, and Mr. Sk--n--st--n everything that was bad. “Ah! my dear sweet Caroline,” she said, with much feeling and great truth, “how you can ever have brought yourself to put up with the brutal treatment of that disgraceful tyrant of a husband of yours,--of whose conduct I must beg of you, my darling, not to ask me to express any opinion,--is more than I should like to take upon myself to state. All I can say is, my love, that if you had not been a perfect angel, you would have packed up your things, and left the ungrateful monster long ago. But I can see what he is after, my dear; he wont rest easy until he has fidgetted you into an early grave; for I see as plainly as plainly can be, that you are fast giving way under it, and that your appetite is not half as good as it used to be, and that unless you take as much strengthening food as you possibly can, the wretch will break your heart chip by chip before he has done with you. However, it is no business of mine, and Heaven forbid that I should say a word about it! Only I wish to goodness gracious, with all my heart and soul, that it had pleased Providence to have allowed your father to have blessed you with a big brother, and then Mr. Sk--n--st--n would never have dared to have treated you in the way he does. But, as I said before, it is a subject which it pains me much to touch upon, so I shall let it drop, merely observing, that if your respected father had the spirit of a tadpole in him, he could never sit quietly smoking his pipe of an evening down at that filthy wharf as he does, while he knows, as well as I do, that a big-whiskered fellow is puzzling his wits to find out the quickest way of driving his own innocent, gentle little lamb of a Caroline into a premature coffin. But I have done with the painful theme, my pet; so let me give you a little more ginger, and we will change the conversation to a more lively theme, if you please. By-the-bye, will you, on your return home, remember to mention to that disgraceful husband of yours, that your dear father is now selling the very best screened Wall’s-end coals as low as twenty-one shillings a ton.”