If this Mr.Clements was rich--rich, one wouldn't mind so much about talents, virtues, and contentment--work-house blessings; but the man's poor, I know it--poo-o-or!" Sir Thomas had a method quite his own of pronouncing those contradictory monosyllables, rich and poor: the former he gave out with an unctuous, fish-saucy gusto, and the word seemed to linger on his palate as a delicious morsel in the progress of delightful deglutition; but when he uttered the word poor, it was with that "mewling and puking" miserable face, appropriated from time immemorial to the gulping of a black draught.
"No, Lady Dillaway, right about's the next word I shall say to that smooth-looking pauper, Mr.Henry Clements--to think of his impudence, making up to my daughter, indeed! a poo-o-o-r man, too." "I did not tell you he was poor, Sir Thomas: you have run away with that idea on your own account: the young man has enough for the present, owes nothing for the past, and reasonable expectations for the-- "Future, I suppose, ey?
what?
I hate futures, all the lot of 'em: cash down, ready money, bird in the hand, that's my ticket, mum: expectations, indeed! Well, go on--go on; I'm as patient as a--as a mule, you see; go on, will you; I may as well hear it all out, Lady Dillaway." "Well, Sir Thomas, since you think so little of the future, I will not insist on expectations; though I really can only excuse your methods of judging by the fancy that you are far too prudent in fearing for the future: however, if you will not admit this, let me take you on your own ground, the present; perhaps Mr.Clements may not possess quite as much as I could wish him, but then surely, dear Thomas, our daughter must have more than--" I object to seeing oaths in print; unless it must be once in a way, as a needful point of character: probably the reader's sagacity will supply many omissions of mine in the eloquence of Sir Thomas Dillaway and others.

But his calm spouse, nothing daunted, quietly whispered on--"You know, Thomas, you have boasted to me that your capital is doubling every year; penny-postage has made the stationery business most prosperous; and if you were wealthy when the old king knighted you as lord mayor, surely you can spare something handsome now for an only daughter, who--" "Ma'am!" almost barked the affectionate father, "if Maria marries money, she shall have money, and plenty of it, good girl; but if she will persist in wedding a beggar, she may starve, mum, starve, and all her poverty-stricken brats too, for any pickings they shall get out of my pocket.

Ey?
what?
you pretend to read your Bible, mum--don't you know we're commanded to 'give to him that hath, and to take away from him that--'" "For shame, Sir Thomas Dillaway!" interrupted the wife, as well she might, for all her quietude: she was a good sort of woman, and her better nature aroused its wrath at this vicious application of a truth so just when applied to morals and graces, so bitterly iniquitous in the case of this world's wealth.

I wish that our ex-lord mayor's distorted text may not be one of real and common usage.

So, silencing her lord, whose character it was to be overbearing to the meek, but cringing to any thing like rebuke or opposition, she forthwith pushed her advantages, adding-- "Your income is now four thousand a-year, as you have told me, Thomas, every hour of every day, since your last lucky hit in the government contract for blue-elephants and whitey-browns.