“I know what you were going to say, that it is mighty pleasant at the end of the year to make all meet—­and much ado we used to have every Thirty-first Night of December to account for our exceedings—­many a long face did you make over your puzzled accounts, and in contriving to make it out how we had spent so much—­or that we had not spent so much—­or that it was impossible we should spend so much next year—­and still we found our slender capital decreasing—­but then, betwixt ways, and projects, and compromises of one sort or another, and talk of curtailing this charge, and doing without that for the future—­and the hope that youth brings, and laughing spirits (in which you were never poor till now,) we pocketed up our loss, and in conclusion, with ‘lusty brimmers’ (as you used to quote it out of hearty cheerful Mr. Cotton, as you called him), we used to welcome in the ‘coming guest.’  Now we have no reckoning at all at the end of the old year—­no flattering promises about the new year doing better for us.”

Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions, that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful how I interrupt it.  I could not help, however, smiling at the phantom of wealth which her dear imagination had conjured up out of a clear income of poor—­hundred pounds a year.  “It is true we were happier when we were poorer, but we were also younger, my cousin.  I am afraid we must put up with the excess, for if we were to shake the superflux into the sea, we should not much mend ourselves.  That we had much to struggle with, as we grew up together, we have reason to be most thankful.  It strengthened, and knit our compact closer.  We could never have been what we have been to each other, if we had always had the sufficiency which you now complain of.  The resisting power—­those natural dilations of the youthful spirit, which circumstances cannot straiten—­with us are long since passed away.  Competence to age is supplementary youth; a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had.  We must ride, where we formerly walked:  live better, and lie softer—­and shall be wise to do so—­than we had means to do in those good old days you speak of.  Yet could those days return—­could you and I once more walk our thirty miles a-day—­could Bannister and Mrs. Bland again be young, and you and I be young to see them—­could the good old one shilling gallery days return—­they are dreams, my cousin, now—­but could you and I at this moment, instead of this quiet argument, by our well-carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa—­be once more struggling up those inconvenient stair-cases, pushed about, and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers—­could I once more hear those anxious shrieks of yours—­and the delicious Thank God, we are safe, which always followed when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of the whole cheerful theatre down beneath us—­I know not the fathom line that ever touched a descent so deep as I would be willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus had, or the great Jew R——­ is supposed to have, to purchase it.  And now do just look at that merry little Chinese waiter holding an umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the head of that pretty insipid half-Madona-ish chit of a lady in that very blue summer-house.”