always be going. You'll be coming home tipsy every night; and
tumbling down and breaking your leg, and putting out your shoulder;
and bringing all sorts of disgrace and expense upon us. And then
you'll be getting into a street fight--oh! I know your temper too
well to doubt it, Mr. Caudle--and be knocking down some of the
police. And then I know what will follow. It MUST follow. Yes,
you'll be sent for a month or six weeks to the treadmill. Pretty
thing that, for a respectable tradesman, Mr. Caudle, to be put upon
the treadmill with all sorts of thieves and vagabonds, and--there,
again, that horrible tobacco!--and riffraff of every kind. I should
like to know how your children are to hold up their heads, after
their father has been upon the treadmill?--No; I WON'T go to sleep.
And I'm not talking of what's impossible. I know it will all happen-
-every bit of it. If it wasn't for the dear children, you might be
ruined and I wouldn't so much as speak about it, but--oh, dear, dear!
at least you might go where they smoke GOOD tobacco--but I can't
forget that I'm their mother. At least, they shall have ONE parent.

"Taverns! Never did a man go to a tavern who didn't die a beggar.
And how your pot-companions will laugh at you when they see your name
in the Gazette! For it MUST happen. Your business is sure to fall
off; for what respectable people will buy toys for their children of
a drunkard? You're not a drunkard! No: but you will be--it's all
the same.

"You've begun by staying out till midnight. By-and-by 'twill be all
night. But don't you think, Mr. Caudle, you shall ever have a key.
I know you. Yes; you'd do exactly like that Prettyman, and what did
he do, only last Wednesday? Why, he let himself in about four in the
morning, and brought home with him his pot-companion, Puffy. His