born in their sphere; and indeed did not much care for going to the house at all.  Miss Belinda was not at all to my liking.  After her engagement with Captain Fizgig, and after Mr. Tidd had paid his 20,000_l_. and Fizgig’s great relations had joined in some of our Director’s companies, Mr. Brough declared he believed that Captain Fizgig’s views were mercenary, and put him to the proof at once, by saying that he must take Miss Brough without a farthing, or not have her at all.  Whereupon Captain Fizgig got an appointment in the colonies, and Miss Brough became more ill-humoured than ever.  But I could not help thinking she was rid of a bad bargain, and pitying poor Tidd, who came back to the charge again more love-sick than ever, and was rebuffed pitilessly by Miss Belinda.  Her father plainly told Tidd, too, that his visits were disagreeable to Belinda, and though he must always love and value him, he begged him to discontinue his calls at the Rookery.  Poor fellow! he had paid his 20,000_l_. away for nothing! for what was six per cent. to him compared to six per cent. and the hand of Miss Belinda Brough?

Well, Mr. Brough pitied the poor love-sick swain, as he called me, so much, and felt such a warm sympathy in my well-being, that he insisted on my going down to Somersetshire with a couple of months’ leave; and away I went, as happy as a lark, with a couple of brand-new suits from Von Stiltz’s in my trunk (I had them made, looking forward to a certain event), and inside the trunk Lieutenant Smith’s fleecy hosiery; wrapping up a parcel of our prospectuses and two letters from John Brough, Esq., to my mother our worthy annuitant, and to Mrs. Hoggarty our excellent shareholder.  Mr. Brough said I was all that the fondest father could wish, that he considered me as his own boy, and that he earnestly begged Mrs. Hoggarty not to delay the sale of her little landed property, as land was high now and must fall; whereas the West Diddlesex Association shares were (comparatively) low, and must inevitably, in the course of a year or two, double, treble, quadruple their present value.

In this way I was prepared, and in this way I took leave of my dear Gus.  As we parted in the yard of the “Bolt-in-Tun,” Fleet Street, I felt that I never should go back to Salisbury Square again, and had made my little present to the landlady’s family accordingly.  She said I was the respectablest gentleman she had ever had in her house:  nor was that saying much, for Bell Lane is in the Rules of the Fleet, and her lodgers used commonly to be prisoners on Rule from that place.  As for Gus, the poor fellow cried and blubbered so that he could not eat a morsel of the muffins and grilled ham with which I treated him for breakfast in the “Bolt-in-Tun” coffee-house; and when I went away was waving his hat and his handkerchief so in the archway of the coach-office that I do believe the wheels of the “True Blue” went over his toes, for I heard him roaring as we passed through the arch.  Ah! how different were my feelings as I sat proudly there on the box by the side of Jim Ward, the coachman, to those I had the last time I mounted that coach, parting from my dear Mary and coming to London with my DIAMOND PIN!