“The shot told.  Your aunt bounced up at once, and in ten minutes more was in my carriage, on our way back to London.  There, sir, was not that generalship?”

“And you played this pretty trick off at my wife’s expense, Mr. Smithers,” said I.

“At your wife’s expense, certainly; but for the benefit of both of you.”

“It’s lucky, sir, that you are an old man,” I replied, “and that the affair happened ten years ago; or, by the Lord, Mr. Smithers, I would have given you such a horsewhipping as you never heard of!”

But this was the way in which Mrs. Hoggarty was brought back to her relatives; and this was the reason why we took that house in Bernard Street, the doings at which must now he described.

CHAPTER X

OF SAM’S PRIVATE AFFAIRS AND OF THE FIRM OF BROUGH AND HOFF

We took a genteel house in Bernard Street, Russell Square, and my aunt sent for all her furniture from the country; which would have filled two such houses, but which came pretty cheap to us young housekeepers, as we had only to pay the carriage of the goods from Bristol.

When I brought Mrs. H. her third half-year’s dividend, having not for four months touched a shilling of her money, I must say she gave me 50_l_. of the 80_l_., and told me that was ample pay for the board and lodging of a poor old woman like her, who did not eat more than a sparrow.

I have myself, in the country, seen her eat nine sparrows in a pudding; but she was rich and I could not complain.  If she saved 600_l_. a year, at the least, by living with us, why, all the savings would one day come to me; and so Mary and I consoled ourselves, and tried to manage matters as well as we might.  It was no easy task to keep a mansion in Bernard Street and save money out of 470_l_. a year, which was my income.  But what a lucky fellow I was to have such an income!

As Mrs. Hoggarty left the Rookery in Smithers’s carriage, Mr. Brough, with his four greys, was entering the lodge-gate; and I should like to have seen the looks of these two gentlemen, as the one was carrying the other’s prey off, out of his own very den, under his very nose.

He came to see her the next day, and protested that he would not leave the house until she left it with him:  that he had heard of his daughter’s infamous conduct, and had seen her in tears—­“in tears, madam, and on her knees, imploring Heaven to pardon her!” But Mr. B. was obliged to leave the house without my aunt, who had a causa major for staying, and hardly allowed poor Mary out of her sight,—­opening every one of the letters that came into the house directed to my wife, and suspecting hers to everybody.  Mary never told me of all this pain for many many years afterwards; but had always a smiling face for her husband when he came home from his work.  As for poor Gus, my aunt had so frightened him, that he never once showed his nose in the place all the time we lived there; but used to be content with news of Mary, of whom he was as fond as he was of me.