Let the idle man be sure of his wife's bread before he marries her; but the working man, one would say, may generally trust to God's goodness without fear.
With his official career Alaric was, as we have said, well contented; in his stock-jobbing line of business he also had had moments of great exaltation, and some moments of considerable depression.
The West Corks had vacillated.

Both he and Undy had sold and bought and sold again; and on the whole their stake in that stupendous national line of accommodation was not so all-absorbing as it had once been.

But if money had been withdrawn from this, it had been invested elsewhere, and the great sum borrowed from Madame Jaquetanape's fortune had been in no part replaced--one full moiety of it had been taken--may one not say stolen ?--to enable Alaric and Undy to continue their speculations.
The undertaking to which they were now both wedded was the Limehouse and Rotherhithe Bridge.

Of this Undy was chairman, and Alaric was a director, and at the present moment they looked for ample fortune, or what would nearly be ample ruin, to the decision of a committee of the House of Commons which was about to sit with the view of making inquiry as to the necessity of the bridge in question.
Mr.Nogo, the member for Mile End, was the parent of this committee.

He asserted that the matter was one of such vital importance not only to the whole metropolis, but to the country at large, that the Government were bound in the first place to give a large subsidy towards building the bridge, and afterwards to pay a heavy annual sum towards the amount which it would be necessary to raise by tolls.