If pretty, lisping Miss Wordsworth thought she had shot an arrow home to his heart over night, a fresh smile and dart from little Mary Ogleby’s dark eyes extracted it in the morning, and made him think of her till the commanding figure and noble air of the Honourable Miss Letitia Amelia Susannah Jemimah de Jenkins, in all the elegance of first-rate millinery and dressmakership, drove her completely from his mind, to be in turn displaced by some one more bewitching.  Mr. Waffles was reputed to be made of money, and he went at it as though he thought it utterly impossible to get through it.  He was greatly aided in his endeavours by the fact of its being all in the funds—­a great convenience to the spendthrift.  It keeps him constantly in cash, and enables him to ‘cut and come again,’ as quick as ever he likes.  Land is not half so accommodating; neither is money on mortgage.  What with time spent in investigating a title, or giving notice to ‘pay in,’ an industrious man wants a second loan by the time, or perhaps before, he gets the first.  Acres are not easy of conversion, and the mere fact of wanting to sell implies a deficiency somewhere.  With money in the funds, a man has nothing to do but lodge a power of attorney with his broker, and write up for four or five thousand pounds, just as he would write to his bootmaker for four or five pairs of boots, the only difference being, that in all probability the money would be down before the boots.  Then, with money in the funds, a man keeps up his credit to the far end—­the last thousand telling no more tales than the first, and making just as good a show.

We are almost afraid to say what Mr. Waffles’ means were, but we really believe, at the time he came of age, that he had 100,000_l._ in the funds, which were nearly at ’par’—­a term expressive of each hundred being worth a hundred, and not eighty-nine or ninety pounds as is now the case, which makes a considerable difference in the melting.  Now a real bona fide 100,000_l._ always counts as three in common parlance, which latter sum would yield a larger income than gilds the horizon of the most mercenary mother’s mind, say ten thousand a-year, which we believe is generally allowed to be ‘v—­a—­a—­ry handsome.’

No wonder, then, that Mr. Waffles was such a hero.  Another great recommendation about him was, that he had not had time to be much plucked.  Many of the young men of fortune that appear upon town have lost half their feathers on the race-course or the gaming-table before the ladies get a chance at them; but here was a nice, fresh-coloured youth, with all his downy verdure full upon him.  It takes a vast of clothes, even at Oxford prices, to come to a thousand pounds, and if we allow four or five thousand for his other extravagances, he could not have done much harm to a hundred thousand.