The woman I fixed my eye on, was the woman who kept house for me at my cottage.  Her name was Selina Goby.  I agree with the late William Cobbett about picking a wife.  See that she chews her food well and sets her foot down firmly on the ground when she walks, and you’re all right.  Selina Goby was all right in both these respects, which was one reason for marrying her.  I had another reason, likewise, entirely of my own discovering.  Selina, being a single woman, made me pay so much a week for her board and services.  Selina, being my wife, couldn’t charge for her board, and would have to give me her services for nothing.  That was the point of view I looked at it from.  Economy—­with a dash of love.  I put it to my mistress, as in duty bound, just as I had put it to myself.

“I have been turning Selina Goby over in my mind,” I said, “and I think, my lady, it will be cheaper to marry her than to keep her.”

My lady burst out laughing, and said she didn’t know which to be most shocked at—­my language or my principles.  Some joke tickled her, I suppose, of the sort that you can’t take unless you are a person of quality.  Understanding nothing myself but that I was free to put it next to Selina, I went and put it accordingly.  And what did Selina say?  Lord! how little you must know of women, if you ask that.  Of course she said, Yes.

As my time drew nearer, and there got to be talk of my having a new coat for the ceremony, my mind began to misgive me.  I have compared notes with other men as to what they felt while they were in my interesting situation; and they have all acknowledged that, about a week before it happened, they privately wished themselves out of it.  I went a trifle further than that myself; I actually rose up, as it were, and tried to get out of it.  Not for nothing!  I was too just a man to expect she would let me off for nothing.  Compensation to the woman when the man gets out of it, is one of the laws of England.  In obedience to the laws, and after turning it over carefully in my mind, I offered Selina Goby a feather-bed and fifty shillings to be off the bargain.  You will hardly believe it, but it is nevertheless true—­she was fool enough to refuse.

After that it was all over with me, of course.  I got the new coat as cheap as I could, and I went through all the rest of it as cheap as I could.  We were not a happy couple, and not a miserable couple.  We were six of one and half-a-dozen of the other.  How it was I don’t understand, but we always seemed to be getting, with the best of motives, in one another’s way.  When I wanted to go up-stairs, there was my wife coming down; or when my wife wanted to go down, there was I coming up.  That is married life, according to my experience of it.

After five years of misunderstandings on the stairs, it pleased an all-wise Providence to relieve us of each other by taking my wife.  I was left with my little girl Penelope, and with no other child.  Shortly afterwards Sir John died, and my lady was left with her little girl, Miss Rachel, and no other child.  I have written to very poor purpose of my lady, if you require to be told that my little Penelope was taken care of, under my good mistress’s own eye, and was sent to school and taught, and made a sharp girl, and promoted, when old enough, to be Miss Rachel’s own maid.