[_Does so; rouses the audience to frantic enthusiasm, and retires
after triple re-call._

[Illustration]

_The Voluble Lady in the Shilling Stalls_ (_during the performance
of a Thrilling Melodramatic Sketch_). I've nothing to say against her
'usban', a quiet, respectable man, and always treated _me_ as a lady,
with grey whiskers--but that's neither here nor there--and I speak of
parties as I find them--_well. That_ was a Thursday. On the _Saturday_
there came a knock at my door, and I answered it, and there was she,
saying, as cool as you please--(_Heroine on Stage_. "Ah, no, no--you
would not ruin me? You will not tell my husband?") So I told her. "I'm
very sorry," I says, "but I can't lend that frying-pan to nobody." So
I got up. Two hours _after_, as I was going down-stairs, she come out
of her room, and says,--"'Allo, ROSE, 'ow _are_ yer?" as if nothing
had 'appened. "Oh, jolly," I says, or somethink o' that sort--_I_
wasn't going to take no notice of _her_--and she says, "Going
out?" like that. I says. "Oh, yes; nothing to stay in for," I says,
careless-like; so Mrs. PIPER, _she_ never said nothing, and _I_ didn't
say nothing; and so it went on till Monday--_well_! Her 'usban' met me
in the passage; and he said to me--good-tempered and civil enough, I
_must_ say--he said--(_Villain on Stage_. "Curse you! I've had enough
of this fooling! Give me money, or I'll twist your neck, and fling
you into yonder mill-dam, to drown!") So o' course I'd no objection
to that; and all she wanted, in the way of eatables and drink, she
_'ad_--no, let me finish _my_ story first. Well, just fancy _'er_
now! She asked me to step in; and she says, "Ow are you?" and was
very nice, and I never said a word--not wishing to bring up the past,