The father of this pleasant grandfather, of the neighbourhood of Mount Pleasant, was a horny-skinned, two-legged, money-getting species of spider who spun webs to catch unwary flies and retired into holes until they were entrapped.  The name of this old pagan’s god was Compound Interest.  He lived for it, married it, died of it.  Meeting with a heavy loss in an honest little enterprise in which all the loss was intended to have been on the other side, he broke something—­something necessary to his existence, therefore it couldn’t have been his heart—­and made an end of his career.  As his character was not good, and he had been bred at a charity school in a complete course, according to question and answer, of those ancient people the Amorites and Hittites, he was frequently quoted as an example of the failure of education.

His spirit shone through his son, to whom he had always preached of “going out” early in life and whom he made a clerk in a sharp scrivener’s office at twelve years old.  There the young gentleman improved his mind, which was of a lean and anxious character, and developing the family gifts, gradually elevated himself into the discounting profession.  Going out early in life and marrying late, as his father had done before him, he too begat a lean and anxious-minded son, who in his turn, going out early in life and marrying late, became the father of Bartholomew and Judith Smallweed, twins.  During the whole time consumed in the slow growth of this family tree, the house of Smallweed, always early to go out and late to marry, has strengthened itself in its practical character, has discarded all amusements, discountenanced all story-books, fairy-tales, fictions, and fables, and banished all levities whatsoever.  Hence the gratifying fact that it has had no child born to it and that the complete little men and women whom it has produced have been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something depressing on their minds.

At the present time, in the dark little parlour certain feet below the level of the street—­a grim, hard, uncouth parlour, only ornamented with the coarsest of baize table-covers, and the hardest of sheet-iron tea-trays, and offering in its decorative character no bad allegorical representation of Grandfather Smallweed’s mind—­ seated in two black horsehair porter’s chairs, one on each side of the fire-place, the superannuated Mr. and Mrs. Smallweed while away the rosy hours.  On the stove are a couple of trivets for the pots and kettles which it is Grandfather Smallweed’s usual occupation to watch, and projecting from the chimney-piece between them is a sort of brass gallows for roasting, which he also superintends when it is in action.  Under the venerable Mr. Smallweed’s seat and guarded by his spindle legs is a drawer in his chair, reported to contain property to a fabulous amount.  Beside him is a spare cushion with which he is always provided in order that he may have something to throw at the venerable partner of his respected age whenever she makes an allusion to money—­a subject on which he is particularly sensitive.