for her money at the very least, and on better security than the Bank of England; for is not a Company of which John Brough is the head better than any other company in England ?" and to be sure I thought he was not far wrong, and promised to speak to Mary's guardians on the subject before our marriage.

Lieutenant Smith, her grandfather, had been at the first very much averse to our union.

(I must confess that, one day finding me alone with her, and kissing, I believe, the tips of her little fingers, he had taken me by the collar and turned me out of doors.) But Sam Titmarsh, with a salary of 250_l_.

a year, a promised fortune of 150_l_.

more, and the right-hand man of Mr.John Brough of London, was a very different man from Sam the poor clerk, and the poor clergyman's widow's son; and the old gentleman wrote me a kind letter enough, and begged me to get him six pairs of lamb's-wool stockings and four ditto waistcoats from Romanis', and accepted them too as a present from me when I went down in June--in happy June of 1823--to fetch my dear Mary away.
Mr.Brough was likewise kindly anxious about my aunt's Slopperton and Squashtail property, which she had not as yet sold, as she talked of doing; and, as Mr.B.represented, it was a sin and a shame that any person in whom he took such interest, as he did in all the relatives of his dear young friend, should only have three per cent.