Anne Perkinsop from my service is best known to herself, I do not know
and I do not wish to know how opinions are formed at Wozenham's on any
point. But Mary Anne Perkinsop although I behaved handsomely to her and
she behaved unhandsomely to me was worth her weight in gold as overawing
lodgers without driving them away, for lodgers would be far more sparing
of their bells with Mary Anne than I ever knew them to be with Maid or
Mistress, which is a great triumph especially when accompanied with a
cast in the eye and a bag of bones, but it was the steadiness of her way
with them through her father's having failed in Pork. It was Mary Anne's
looking so respectable in her person and being so strict in her spirits
that conquered the tea-and-sugarest gentleman (for he weighed them both
in a pair of scales every morning) that I have ever had to deal with and
no lamb grew meeker, still it afterwards came round to me that Miss
Wozenham happening to pass and seeing Mary Anne take in the milk of a
milkman that made free in a rosy-faced way (I think no worse of him) with
every girl in the street but was quite frozen up like the statue at
Charing-cross by her, saw Mary Anne's value in the lodging business and
went as high as one pound per quarter more, consequently Mary Anne with
not a word betwixt us says "If you will provide yourself Mrs. Lirriper in
a month from this day I have already done the same," which hurt me and I
said so, and she then hurt me more by insinuating that her father having
failed in Pork had laid her open to it.

My dear I do assure you it's a harassing thing to know what kind of girls
to give the preference to, for if they are lively they get bell'd off
their legs and if they are sluggish you suffer from it yourself in
complaints and if they are sparkling-eyed they get made love to, and if
they are smart in their persons they try on your Lodgers' bonnets and if
they are musical I defy you to keep them away from bands and organs, and
allowing for any difference you like in their heads their heads will be