I am an old woman now and my good looks are gone but that's me my dear
over the plate-warmer and considered like in the times when you used to
pay two guineas on ivory and took your chance pretty much how you came
out, which made you very careful how you left it about afterwards because
people were turned so red and uncomfortable by mostly guessing it was
somebody else quite different, and there was once a certain person that
had put his money in a hop business that came in one morning to pay his
rent and his respects being the second floor that would have taken it
down from its hook and put it in his breast-pocket--you understand my
dear--for the L, he says of the original--only there was no mellowness in
_his_ voice and I wouldn't let him, but his opinion of it you may gather
from his saying to it "Speak to me Emma!" which was far from a rational
observation no doubt but still a tribute to its being a likeness, and I
think myself it _was_ like me when I was young and wore that sort of
stays.

But it was about the Lodgings that I was intending to hold forth and
certainly I ought to know something of the business having been in it so
long, for it was early in the second year of my married life that I lost
my poor Lirriper and I set up at Islington directly afterwards and
afterwards came here, being two houses and eight-and-thirty years and
some losses and a deal of experience.

Girls are your first trial after fixtures and they try you even worse
than what I call the Wandering Christians, though why _they_ should roam
the earth looking for bills and then coming in and viewing the apartments
and stickling about terms and never at all wanting them or dreaming of
taking them being already provided, is, a mystery I should be thankful to
have explained if by any miracle it could be. It's wonderful they live
so long and thrive so on it but I suppose the exercise makes it healthy,