Sponge was never so happy in his life.  He could have stood on his head, or been guilty of any sort of extravagance, short of wasting his money.  Oh, he was happy!  Oh, he was joyous!  He was intoxicated with pleasure.  As he eyed his angelic charmer, her lustrous eyes, her glowing cheeks, her pearly teeth, the bewitching fulness of her elegant tournure, and thought of the masterly way she rode the run—­above all, of the dashing style in which she charged the mill-race—­he felt a something quite different to anything he had experienced with any of the buxom widows or lackadaisical misses whom he could just love or not, according to circumstances, among whom his previous experience had lain.  Miss Glitters, he knew, had nothing, and yet he felt he could not do without her; the puzzlement of his mind was, how the deuce they should manage matters—­’make tongue and buckle meet,’ as he elegantly phrased it.

It is pleasant to hear a bachelor’s pros and cons on the subject of matrimony; how the difficulties of the gentleman out of love vanish or change into advantages with the one in—­’Oh, I would never think of marrying without a couple of thousand a year at the very least!’ exclaims young Fastly. ’I can’t do without four hunters and a hack. I can’t do without a valet. I can’t do without a brougham. I must belong to half-a-dozen clubs. I’ll not marry any woman who can’t keep me comfortable—­bachelors can live upon nothing—­bachelors are welcome everywhere—­very different thing with a wife.  Frightful things milliners’ bills—­fifty guineas for a dress, twenty for a bonnet—­ladies’ maids are the very devil—­never satisfied—­far worse to please than their mistresses.’  And between the whiffs of a cigar he hums the old saw—­

    ’Needles and pins, needles and pins,
    When a man marries his sorrow begins.’

Now take him on the other tack—­Fast is smitten.

‘’Ord hang it! a married man can live on very little,’ soliloquizes our friend.  A nice lovely creature to keep one at home.  Hunting’s all humbug; it’s only the flash of the thing that makes one follow it.  Then the danger far more than counterbalances the pleasure.  Awful places one has to ride over, to be sure, or submit to be called “slow.”  Horrible thing to set up for a horseman, and then have to ride to maintain one’s reputation.  Will be thankful to give it up altogether.  The bays will make capital carriage-horses, and one can often pick up a second-hand carriage as good as new.  Shall save no end of money by not having to put “B” to my name in the assessed tax-payer.  One club’s as good as a dozen—­will give up the Polyanthus and the Sunflower, and the Refuse and the Rag.  Ladies’ dresses are cheap enough.  Saw a beautiful gown t’other day for a guinea.  Will start Master Bergamotte.  Does nothing for his wages; will scarce clean my boots.  Can get a chap for half what I give him, who’ll do double the work.  Will make Beans into coachman.  What a convenience to have one’s wife’s maid to sew on one’s buttons, and keep one’s toes in one’s stocking-feet!  Declare I lose half my things at the washing for want of marking.  Hanged if I won’t marry and be respectable—­marriage is an honourable state!’ And thereupon Tom grows a couple of inches taller in his own conceit.