'If my mother had lived, I would be brought up at a boarding-school,' says Anniseed-water. 'Why, curse you,' says Gin, 'what was your mother but an old apple-woman?' 'And curse you,' says Anniseed-water, 'what was your father but a gallows-bird of a bum-bailiff?' 'And then they fell a fighting and scratching; and Anniseed-water (the present Mrs. Jerry Sullivan) was getting well cuffed, when I came to her assistance. So that was our first meeting.' 'You may boast of it,' said I. 'Now then for your courtship.' 'You shall hear,' said he. 'She was so much obliged to me, that she asked me home to tea, and I went. I found her a buxom widow, and at that time she was as fine a doorful, as tight a wench over a washing-tub, as you would wish to see. And there was her daughter, and a great deal of good company;--the tailor's wife, and the barber's wife, and the pawnbroker's wife; and none so grand as they. And they told as many lies over the first dish of tea as a parcel of porters would over twenty barrels of strong beer. And a young valet, who I could see was courting the widow, swore that it was as good to be out of the world as out of the fashion, and then he whispered to her that she looked killing genteel. But I only pinched her elbow, and I thought she liked that better.' 'It was very vulgar, however,' observed I. 'The first process is to kiss the hand.' 'Ogh!' cried Jerry, 'that is a slobbering trick, to be mumbling knuckles just as a pup niggles at a bone. I am the man to take at once, and fluster a woman, and reckon her ribs for her. No creeping up, and up, and up; and then down, and down, and down, for me--Why, as I hope to be saved, I gave that same widow a thundering kiss on three days acquaintance.' 'Poor thing!' exclaimed I. 'Well, and what did she say?' 'Say? why she said, "Be quiet now, though I know you can't." So, of course, I kissed her still more; while she changed colour in a minute as often as a blackberry in a month. "Ha done, do;" says she, "or I will call out, only there is nobody at home;"--when, at the moment, in pops the valet, and catches us lip to lip. 'Now he was a conceited sort of a chap, who used to set himself off with great airs, shew his white hands--that, I verily believe, he washed every day of his life;--curse and swear just like a gentleman, keep a tooth-brush, and make both his heels meet when he bowed. 'Well, I had nothing upon earth to oppose to all this but a bit of a quarrel;--that was _my_ strong point;--and sure enough, I gave him such a beating for catching us, that the widow thought me main stout, and married me in a week.