SECOND GIRL. Oh, yes, I remember now. (_General disappointment._) I couldn't help laughing myself. Joe didn't ought to have told--but she needn't have got into such a state over it, _need_ she? FIRST GIRL. That was Eliza all over. If George had been sensible, he'd have broken it off then and there--but no, he wouldn't hear a word against her, not at that time--it was the button-hook opened _his_ eyes! [_The other passengers strive to dissemble a frantic desire to know how and why this delicate operation was performed._ SECOND GIRL (_mysteriously_). And enough too! But what put George off most was her keeping that bag so quiet. [_The general imagination is once more stirred to its depths by this mysterious allusion._ FIRST GIRL. Yes, he did feel that, I know, he used to come and go on about it to me by the hour together. "I shouldn't have minded so much," he told me over and over again, with the tears standing in his eyes,--"if it hadn't been that the bottles was all silver-mounted!" SECOND GIRL. Silver-mounted? I never heard of _that_ before--no wonder he felt hurt! FIRST GIRL (_impressively_). Silver tops to every one of them--and that girl to turn round as she did, and her with an Uncle in the oil and colour line, too--it nearly broke George's 'art! SECOND GIRL. He's such a one to take on about things--but, as I said to him, "George," I says, "You must remember it might have been worse. Suppose you'd been married to that girl, and _then_ found out about Alf and the Jubilee sixpence--how would _that_ have been?" FIRST GIRL (_unconsciously acting as the mouthpiece of the other passengers_). And what did he say to _that_? SECOND GIRL. Oh, nothing--there was nothing he _could_ say, but I could see he was struck. She behaved very mean to the last--she wouldn't send back the German concertina. FIRST GIRL. You don't say so! Well, I wouldn't have thought that of her, bad as she is. SECOND GIRL. No, she stuck to it that it wasn't like a regular present, being got through a grocer, and as she couldn't send him back the tea, being drunk,--but did you hear how she treated Emma over the crinoline 'at she got for her? FIRST GIRL (_to the immense relief of the rest_). No, what was that? SECOND GIRL. Well, I had it from Emma her own self. Eliza wrote up to her and says, in a postscript like,--Why, this is Tottenham Court Road, I get out here. Good-bye, dear, I must tell you the rest another day. [_Gets out, leaving the tantalised audience inconsolable, and longing for courage to question her companion as to the precise details of Eliza's heartless behaviour to George. The companion, however, relapses into a stony reserve. Enter a_ CHATTY OLD GENTLEMAN _who has no secrets from anybody, and of course selects as the first recipient of his confidence the one person who hates to be talked to in an omnibus_.