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Leadbatter and her Rosie; he would write to that popular composer he had noticed his letter lying on the mantel-piece the other day and accept the fifty pounds, and whatever he did he could do anonymously, so that Peter wouldn't know, after all; he would escape from this wretched den and take a flat far away, somewhere where nobody knew him, and there he would sit and work, with Mary Ann for his housekeeper.
Leadbatter had unearthed the box. Why did he give her more than the pair that could always be kept hidden in her pocket? Yes, it was the gloves. And then there was the canary. Mrs. Leadbatter had suspected he was leaving her for a reason. She had put two and two together, she had questioned Mary Ann, and the ingenuous little idiot had naively told her he was going to take her with him.
Not long after, Lancelot conducted him softly down the dark, silent stairs, holding his bedroom candle-stick in his hand, for Mrs. Leadbatter always turned out the hall lamp on her way to bed. The old phrases came to the young men's lips as their hands met in a last hearty grip. "Lebt wohl!" said Lancelot. "Auf Wiedersehen!" replied Peter, threateningly.
"Did you ring, sir?" said a wheezy voice, at last. Mrs. Leadbatter had got tired of waiting. Lancelot started violently Mrs. Leadbatter had latterly left him entirely to Mary Ann. "It's my hastmer," she had explained to him apologetically, meeting him casually in the passage. "I can't trollop up and down stairs as I used to when I fust took this house five-an'-twenty year ago, and pore Mr.
No, there's no denying it there's my pouch, old man I hate the poor; their virtues are only a shade more vulgar than their vices. This Leadbatter creature is honest after her lights she sends me up the most ridiculous leavings and I only hate her the more for it." "I suppose she works Mary Ann's fingers to the bone from the same mistaken sense of duty," said Peter acutely.
The blood burnt in his veins as he thought of the cruelty of circumstance and the heartless honesty of her mistress. He made up his mind for the second time to give Mrs. Leadbatter a piece of his mind in the morning. "Well, go to bed now, my poor child," he said, "or you'll get no rest at all." "Yessir." She went obediently up a couple of stairs, then turned her head appealingly towards him.
This Leadbatter creature is honest after her lights she sends me up the most ridiculous leavings and I only hate her the more for it." "I suppose she works Mary Ann's fingers to the bone from the same mistaken sense of duty," said Peter, acutely. "Thanks; think I'll try one of my cigars. I filled my case, I fancy, before I came out. Yes, here it is; won't you try one?"
Leadbatter gave you. Then ten times as much as that, and ten times as much as all that" he spread his arms wider and wider "and ten times as much as all that, and then" here his arms were prematurely horizontal, so he concluded hastily but impressively, "and then FIFTY times as much as all that. Do you understand how rich you are?" "Yessir."
Then Beethoven came and rubbed himself against his master's leg, and Lancelot got up, as one wakes from a dream, and stretched his cramped limbs dazedly, and rang the bell mechanically for tea. He was groping on the mantel-piece for the matches when the knock at the door came, and he did not turn round till he had found them. He struck a light, expecting to see Mrs. Leadbatter or Rosie.
His affairs were found in hopeless confusion, and Mary Ann was considered lucky to be taken into the house of the well-to-do Mrs. Leadbatter, of London, the eldest sister of a young woman who had nursed the vicar's wife. Mrs. Leadbatter had promised the vicar to train up the girl in the way a domestic should go.
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