and sly look; just for all as if they were first cousins to people
that picked pockets. And that will be your case, Caudle: in six
months the dear children won't know their own father.

"Well, if I know myself at all, I could have borne anything but
billiards. The companions you'll find! The Captains that will be
always borrowing fifty pounds of you! I tell you, Caudle, a
billiard-room's a place where ruin of all sorts is made easy, I may
say, to the lowest understanding, so you can't miss it. It's a
chapel-of-ease for the devil to preach in--don't tell me not to be
eloquent: I don't know what you mean, Mr. Caudle, and I shall be
just as eloquent as I like. But I never can open my lips--and it
isn't often, goodness knows!--that I'm not insulted.

"No, I won't be quiet on this matter; I won't, Caudle: on any other,
I wouldn't say a word--and you know it--if you didn't like it; but on
this matter I WILL speak. I know you can't play at billiards; and
never could learn. I dare say not; but that makes it all the worse,
for look at the money you'll lose; see the ruin you'll be brought to.
It's no use your telling me you'll not play--now you can't help it.
And nicely you'll be eaten up. Don't talk to me; dear aunt told me
all about it. The lots of fellows that go every day into billiard-
rooms to get their dinners, just as a fox sneaks into a farm-yard to
look about him for a fat goose--and they'll eat you up, Caudle; I
know they will.

"Billiard-balls, indeed! Well, in my time I've been over Woolwich
Arsenal--you were something like a man then, for it was just before
we were married--and then I saw all sorts of balls; mountains of 'em,
to be shot away at churches, and into people's peaceable habitations,