disturbance? far from it; I slunk back to my bedroom (being enabled to
walk silently in the beautiful pair of worsted slippers Miss Penelope
J--s worked for me: they are worn out now, dear Penelope!) and then
rattling open the door with a great noise, descending the stairs,
singing "Son vergin vezzosa" at the top of my voice. You were not in my
sitting-room, Mrs. Cammysole, when I entered that apartment.

You have been reading all my letters, papers, manuscripts, brouillons
of verses, inchoate articles for the Morning Post and Morning Chronicle,
invitations to dinner and tea--all my family letters, all Eliza
Townley's letters, from the first, in which she declared that to be the
bride of her beloved Michelagnolo was the fondest wish of her maiden
heart, to the last, in which she announced that her Thomas was the
best of husbands, and signed herself "Eliza Slogger;" all Mary
Farmer's letters, all Emily Delamere's; all that poor foolish old Miss
MacWhirter's, whom I would as soon marry as ----: in a word, I know
that you, you hawk-beaked, keen-eyed, sleepless, indefatigable old Mrs.
Cammysole, have read all my papers for these fifteen years.

I know that you cast your curious old eyes over all the manuscripts
which you find in my coat-pockets and those of my pantaloons, as they
hang in a drapery over the door-handle of my bedroom.

I know that you count the money in my green and gold purse, which Lucy
Netterville gave me, and speculate on the manner in which I have laid
out the difference between to-day and yesterday.

I know that you have an understanding with the laundress (to whom you
say that you are all-powerful with me), threatening to take away my
practice from her, unless she gets up gratis some of your fine linen.