Poor fellow! he had paid his 20,000_l_.

away for nothing! for what was six per cent.

to him compared to six per cent.

and the hand of Miss Belinda Brough?
Well, Mr.Brough pitied the poor love-sick swain, as he called me, so much, and felt such a warm sympathy in my well-being, that he insisted on my going down to Somersetshire with a couple of months' leave; and away I went, as happy as a lark, with a couple of brand-new suits from Von Stiltz's in my trunk (I had them made, looking forward to a certain event), and inside the trunk Lieutenant Smith's fleecy hosiery; wrapping up a parcel of our prospectuses and two letters from John Brough, Esq., to my mother our worthy annuitant, and to Mrs.Hoggarty our excellent shareholder.

Mr.Brough said I was all that the fondest father could wish, that he considered me as his own boy, and that he earnestly begged Mrs.Hoggarty not to delay the sale of her little landed property, as land was high now and _must fall_; whereas the West Diddlesex Association shares were (comparatively) low, and must inevitably, in the course of a year or two, double, treble, quadruple their present value.
In this way I was prepared, and in this way I took leave of my dear Gus.
As we parted in the yard of the "Bolt-in-Tun," Fleet Street, I felt that I never should go back to Salisbury Square again, and had made my little present to the landlady's family accordingly.