"Bah! bah!" says Mr.Brough, "don't tell _me_.

People don't send haunches of venison to you for nothing;" and I'm convinced he thought I was a very cautious prudent fellow, for not bragging about my great family, and keeping my connection with them a secret.

To be sure he might have learned the truth from Gus, who lived with me; but Gus would insist that I was hand in glove with all the nobility, and boasted about me ten times as much as I did myself.
The chaps used to call me the "West Ender." "See," thought I, "what I have gained by Aunt Hoggarty giving me a diamond-pin! What a lucky thing it is that she did not give me the money, as I hoped she would! Had I not had the pin--had I even taken it to any other person but Mr.Polonius, Lady Drum would never have noticed me; had Lady Drum never noticed me, Mr.Brough never would, and I never should have been third clerk of the West Diddlesex." I took heart at all this, and wrote off on the very evening of my appointment to my dearest Mary Smith, giving her warning that a "certain event," for which one of us was longing very earnestly, might come off sooner than we had expected.

And why not?
Miss S.'s own fortune was 70_l_.

a year, mine was 150_l_., and when we had 300_l_., we always vowed we would marry.