"And me slaving morn and night to catch up with your messy ways! What did I tell you the first time you came back from the Hospital looking like a malkin, and with a clean shift of clothes laid out for you and the water on the boil, that I couldn't have taken more trouble, no, not for a funeral?
Didn't I tell you 'twas positively lowering ?" "I ha'n't a doubt you did, my dear." "That's what you are.

You're a lowering man.

And there by your own account you met a lady, with your neck streaked like a ham-rasher, and me not by--thank goodness!--to see what her feelings were; and now 'tis magistrates.

But nothing warns you.

I suppose you thought that as 'twas only fondlings without any father or mother it didn't matter how you dressed!" Mrs.Trapp, though she might seem to talk at random, had a wifely knack of dropping a shaft home.