Bill's happiness was not, however, wholly without alloy.

The ladies of pleasure are always so excessively angry when a man does not make love to them, that there is nothing they will not say against him; and the fair matrons in the vicinity of Fiddler's Row spread all manner of unfounded reports against poor Bachelor Bill.

By degrees, however,--for, as Tacitus has said, doubtless with a prophetic eye to Bachelor Bill, "the truth gains by delay,"-- these reports began to die insensibly away; and Bill now waxing near to the confines of middle age, his friends comfortably settled for him that he would be Bachelor Bill all his life.

For the rest, he was an excellent fellow,--gave his broken victuals to the poor, professed a liberal turn of thinking, and in all the quarrels among the blowens (your crack blowens are a quarrelsome set!) always took part with the weakest.
Although Bill affected to be very select in his company, he was never forgetful of his old friends; and Mrs.Margery Lobkins having been very good to him when he was a little boy in a skeleton jacket, he invariably sent her a card to his soirees.

The good lady, however, had not of late years deserted her chimney-corner.