"Next Tuesday the fire-insurance is due. I should like to know how
it's to be paid? Why, it can't be paid at all! That five pounds
would have more than done it--and now, insurance is out of the
question. And there never were so many fires as there are now. I
shall never close my eyes all night,--but what's that to you, so
people can call you liberal, Mr. Caudle? Your wife and children may
all be burnt alive in their beds--as all of us to a certainty shall
be, for the insurance MUST drop. And after we've insured for so many
years! But how, I should like to know, are people to insure who make
ducks and drakes of their five pounds?

"I did think we might go to Margate this summer. There's poor little
Caroline, I'm sure she wants the sea. But no, dear creature! she
must stop at home--all of us must stop at home--she'll go into a
consumption, there's no doubt of that; yes--sweet little angel!--I've
made up my mind to lose her, NOW. The child might have been saved;
but people can't save their children and throw away their five pounds
too.

"I wonder where poor little Mopsy is! While you were lending that
five pounds, the dog ran out of the shop. You know, I never let it
go into the street, for fear it should be bit by some mad dog, and
come home and bite all the children. It wouldn't now at all astonish
me if the animal was to come back with the hydrophobia, and give it
to all the family. However, what's your family to you, so you can
play the liberal creature with five pounds?

"Do you hear that shutter, how it's banging to and fro? Yes,--I know
what it wants as well as you; it wants a new fastening. I was going