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Old Bates and the Captain, between them, gave mamma a hundred pounds when she left me (she had the deuce’s own luck, to be sure–much more than ever fell to ME, I know) and as she said she WOULD try and work for her living, it was thought best to take a house and let lodgings, which she did. Our first and second floor paid us four guineas a week, on an average; and the front parlor and attic made forty pounds more. Mamma and Eliza used to have the front attic: but I took that, and they slept in the servants’ bedroom. Lizzy had a pretty genius for work, and earned a guinea a week that way; so that we had got nearly two hundred a year over the rent to keep house with,–and we got on pretty well. Besides, women eat nothing: my women didn’t care for meat for days together sometimes,–so that it was only necessary to dress a good steak or so for me.

Mamma would not think of my continuing in the Post Office. She said her dear Robert, her husband’s son, her gallant soldier, and all that, should remain at home and be a gentleman–which I was, certainly, though I didn’t find fifty pounds a year very much to buy clothes and be a gentleman upon. To be sure, mother found me shirts and linen, so that THAT wasn’t in the fifty pounds. She kicked a little at paying the washing too; but she gave in at last, for I was her dear Bob, you know; and I’m blest if I could not make her give me the gown off her back. Fancy! once she cut up a very nice rich black silk scarf, which my sister Waters sent her, and made me a waistcoat and two stocks of it. She was so VERY soft, the old lady!

*****

I’d lived in this way for five years or more, making myself content with my fifty pounds a year (PERHAPS I had saved a little out of it; but that’s neither here nor there). From year’s end to year’s end I remained faithful to my dear mamma, never leaving her except for a month or so in the summer–when a bachelor may take a trip to Gravesend or Margate, which would be too expensive for a family. I say a bachelor, for the fact is, I don’t know whether I am married or not–never having heard a word since of the scoundrelly Mrs. Stubbs.

I never went to the public-house before meals: for, with my beggarly fifty pounds, I could not afford to dine away from home: but there I had my regular seat, and used to come home PRETTY GLORIOUS, I can tell you. Then bed till eleven; then breakfast and the newspaper; then a stroll in Hyde Park or St. James’s; then home at half-past three to dinner–when I jollied, as I call it, for the rest of the day. I was my mother’s delight; and thus, with a clear conscience, I managed to live on.

*****

How fond she was of me, to be sure! Being sociable myself, and loving to have my friends about me, we often used to assemble a company of as hearty fellows as you would wish to sit down with, and keep the nights up royally. “Never mind, my boys,” I used to say. “Send the bottle round: mammy pays for all.” As she did, sure enough: and sure enough we punished her cellar too. The good old lady used to wait upon us, as if for all the world she had been my servant, instead of a lady and my mamma. Never used she to repine, though I often, as I must confess, gave her occasion (keeping her up till four o’clock in the morning, because she never could sleep until she saw her “dear Bob” in bed, and leading her a sad anxious life). She was of such a sweet temper, the old lady, that I think in the course of five years I never knew her in a passion, except twice: and then with sister Lizzy, who declared I was ruining the house, and driving the lodgers away, one by one. But mamma would not hear of such envious spite on my sister’s part. “Her Bob” was always right, she said. At last Lizzy fairly retreated, and went to the Waters’s.–I was glad of it, for her temper was dreadful, and we used to be squabbling from morning till night!