Pistol Packin' Mama

Were they all, he asked himself, in the words of a song he had sometimes sung in his bath, pistol-packing Mommas, or was it just that he had bad luck in the women he associated with? Mrs Molloy was perhaps to be preferred to Mavis as a pistol-packer, for she had not locked him up in a smelly cupboard as had the future Mrs James Ponder, but only in that respect was there a preference.

Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin. Chapter 11.III