“And there’s that Bell,” she continued, though I could not detect any appearance of connection, “it’s enough to give anyone the hump to see him now that he’s taken to chapel-going, and his mother’s prepared to meet Jesus and all that to me, and now she ain’t a-going to die, and drinks half a bottle of champagne a day, and then Grigg, him as preaches, you know, asked Bell if I really was too gay, not but what when I was young I’d snap my fingers at any ‘fly by night’ in Holborn, and if I was togged out and had my teeth I’d do it now.  I lost my poor dear Watkins, but of course that couldn’t be helped, and then I lost my dear Rose.  Silly faggot to go and ride on a cart and catch the bronchitics.  I never thought when I kissed my dear Rose in Pullen’s Passage and she gave me the chop, that I should never see her again, and her gentleman friend was fond of her too, though he was a married man.  I daresay she’s gone to bits by now.  If she could rise and see me with my bad finger, she would cry, and I should say, ‘Never mind, ducky, I’m all right.’  Oh! dear, it’s coming on to rain.  I do hate a wet Saturday night—­poor women with their nice white stockings and their living to get,” etc., etc.

And yet age does not wither this godless old sinner, as people would say it ought to do.  Whatever life she has led, it has agreed with her very sufficiently.  At times she gives us to understand that she is still much solicited; at others she takes quite a different tone.  She has not allowed even Joe King so much as to put his lips to hers this ten years.  She would rather have a mutton chop any day.  “But ah! you should have seen me when I was sweet seventeen.  I was the very moral of my poor dear mother, and she was a pretty woman, though I say it that shouldn’t.  She had such a splendid mouth of teeth.  It was a sin to bury her in her teeth.”

I only knew of one thing at which she professes to be shocked.  It is that her son Tom and his wife Topsy are teaching the baby to swear.  “Oh! it’s too dreadful awful,” she exclaimed, “I don’t know the meaning of the words, but I tell him he’s a drunken sot.”  I believe the old woman in reality rather likes it.

“But surely, Mrs Jupp,” said I, “Tom’s wife used not to be Topsy.  You used to speak of her as Pheeb.”

“Ah! yes,” she answered, “but Pheeb behaved bad, and it’s Topsy now.”

Ernest’s daughter Alice married the boy who had been her playmate more than a year ago.  Ernest gave them all they said they wanted and a good deal more.  They have already presented him with a grandson, and I doubt not, will do so with many more.  Georgie though only twenty-one is owner of a fine steamer which his father has bought for him.  He began when about thirteen going with old Rollings and Jack in the barge from Rochester to the upper Thames with bricks; then his father bought him and Jack barges of their own, and then he bought them both