the price of eggs just now? There's not an egg you can trust to
under seven and eight a shilling; well, you've only just to reckon up
how many eggs--don't lie swearing there at the eggs in that manner,
Mr. Caudle; unless you expect the bed to let you fall through. You
call yourself a respectable tradesman, I suppose? Ha! I only wish
people knew you as well as I do! Swearing at eggs, indeed! But I'm
tired of this usage, Mr. Caudle; quite tired of it; and I don't care
how soon it's ended!

"I'm sure I do nothing but work and labour, and think how to make the
most of everything; and this is how I'm rewarded. I should like to
see anybody whose joints go further than mine. But if I was to throw
away your money into the street, or lay it out in fine feathers on
myself, I should be better thought of. The woman who studies her
husband and her family is always made a drudge of. It's your fine
fal-lal wives who've the best time of it.

"What's the use of your lying groaning there in that manner? That
won't make me hold my tongue, I can tell you. You think to have it
all your own way--but you won't, Mr. Caudle! You can insult my
dinner; look like a demon, I may say, at a wholesome piece of cold
mutton--ah! the thousands of far better creatures than you are who'd
been thankful for that mutton!--and I'm never to speak! But you're
mistaken--I will. Your usage of me, Mr. Caudle, is infamous--
unworthy of a man. I only wish people knew you for what you are; but
I've told you again and again they shall some day.

"Puddings! And now I suppose I shall hear of nothing but puddings!
Yes, and I know what it would end in. First, you'd have a pudding
every day--oh, I know your extravagance--then you'd go for fish,--