suit! Well, there, it isn't a suit; it's a splash-board.

And I did fancy that suit, too. But that's just the way. I never do
get particularly fond of anything in this world but what something
dreadful happens to it. I had a tame rat when I was a boy, and I
loved that animal as only a boy would love an old water-rat; and one
day it fell into a large dish of gooseberry-fool that was standing to
cool in the kitchen, and nobody knew what had become of the poor
creature until the second helping.

I do hate wet weather in town. At least, it is not so much the wet as
the mud that I object to. Somehow or other I seem to possess an
irresistible alluring power over mud. I have only to show myself in
the street on a muddy day to be half-smothered by it. It all comes of
being so attractive, as the old lady said when she was struck by
lightning. Other people can go out on dirty days and walk about for
hours without getting a speck upon themselves; while if I go across
the road I come back a perfect disgrace to be seen (as in my boyish
days my poor dear mother tried often to tell me). If there were only
one dab of mud to be found in the whole of London, I am convinced I
should carry it off from all competitors.

I wish I could return the affection, but I fear I never shall be able
to. I have a horror of what they call the "London particular." I
feel miserable and muggy all through a dirty day, and it is quite a
relief to pull one's clothes off and get into bed, out of the way of
it all. Everything goes wrong in wet weather. I don't know how it
is, but there always seem to me to be more people, and dogs, and
perambulators, and cabs, and carts about in wet weather than at any
other time, and they all get in your way more, and everybody is so