hing of it, and sticking to bread. If I, as a

honest tradesman, am able to provide a little beer, none of your

declaring on water. When you go to Rome, do as Rome does. Rome

will be a ugly customer to you, if you don’t. I’m your Rome, you

know.”

Then he began grumbling again:

“With you flying into the face of your own wittles and drink! I

don’t know how scarce you mayn’t make the wittles and drink

here, by your flopping tricks and your unfeeling conduct. Look at

your boy: he is your’n, ain’t he? He’s as thin as a lath. Do you call

yourself a mother, and not know that a mother’s first duty is to

blow her boy out?”

This touched young Jerry on a tender place; who adjured his

mother to perform her first duty, and whatever else she did or

neglected, above all things to lay especial stress on the discharge

of that maternal function so affectingly and delicately indicated by

his other parent.

Thus the evening wore away with the Cruncher family, until

Young Jerry was ordered to bed, and his mother, laid under

similar injunctions, obeyed them. Mr. Cruncher beguiled the

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

earlier watches of the night with solitary pipes, and did not start

upon his excursion until one o’clock. Towards that small and

ghostly hour, he rose up from his chair, took a key out of his

pocket, opened a locked cupbo