Then of an evening, nothing would suit my lord duke but he must needs go lolling against the post of the street-door with his great big lumpy legs--like the ballustrades on Waterloo Bridge--crossed one over the other, picking his teeth with a bit of one of my pens, and ogling the girls, and making a noise with his lips after them as they went by--as if he was a perfect Adonis in plush--a--in plush--(tut! tut! it is very strange! I never can remember the name of those what-d’ye-call-’ems). Or if he wasn’t at the street door, wasting _my_ time against the post, there the monkey would be perched up on the top step of the area ladder, with his cauliflower head poked over the rails, and either in full gossip with what he made me believe was his washerwoman (the wretch!) or else sneering away at the policeman, or making game of the soldiers as they passed the house,--both of whom, he told our cook, who told me, were low-class hanimals, and people that he could not condescend to sit down to table with--so there was no use hasking on ’em. The consequence of this was, that if I had to ring once of an evening for him, I had to ring at least a hundred times before I could get him to hear me. And when he did hear me, sneak-to would go the street door, and in he would come all of an imitation hurry, buttoning up his waistcoat as if he had been dressing. Only let me stir out of the house, too, for a minute, and as sure as eggs are eggs, I should find him when I came back with his four chins resting comfortably on the top of our parlour blinds, and staring out of window with all his might--as if he was a lord bishop of the land, and had nothing to do, and there were no such things as teacups to wash up, or British plate to clean,--which latter article, as every married lady knows, is only a cheap substitute for silver, provided you’re rubbing it up every quarter of an hour, and if you’re not, why it looks more like a very expensive substitute for brass. Though, as for washing up the tea-things! I really don’t suppose the corpulent puppy did it above half-a-dozen times, at most, all the while he was with me. For, what do you think, gentle Reader, the nasty good-for-nothing, deceitful, carneying peacock used to do? Why if he usen’t to give that stupid, stupid cook of mine--who ought to have known better at her time of life--a filthy kiss, to get her to do it for him; and I suppose that he must have thought his slobberings particularly precious, for, positively, if the red-haired monkey didn’t go offering the same high terms to the maids, if they would only fill his coal scuttles for him, and--I blush for my sex when I say it--the minxes used to do it at the paltry price. What they can have seen, in the man, I’m sure I can’t make out; and I’m certain they didn’t know one thing--any more than I myself did at that time--or they never could have allowed him to trifle with their very best affections in the shameful way he