Mary, when she saw me, burst out laughing, and ran down the lawn; my Lord making a huge crowing, too, and holding out his little fat hands.  Mr. Preston, who was a heavy man, was slowly getting up, when, catching a sight of me looking as fierce as the crater of Mount Etna,—­he gave a start back and lost his footing, and rolled over and over, walloping into the water at the garden’s edge.  It was not deep, and he came bubbling and snorting out again in as much fright as fury.

“You d-d ungrateful villain!” says he, “what do you stand there laughing for?”

“I’m waiting your orders for Timbuctoo, sir,” says I, and laughed fit to die; and so did my Lord Tiptoff and his party, who joined us on the lawn:  and Jeames the footman came forward and helped Mr. Preston out of the water.

“Oh, you old sinner!” says my Lord, as his brother-in-law came up the slope.  “Will that heart of yours be always so susceptible, you romantic, apoplectic, immoral man?”

Mr. Preston went away, looking blue with rage, and ill-treated his wife for a whole month afterwards.

“At any rate,” says my Lord, “Titmarsh here has got a place through our friend’s unhappy attachment; and Mrs. Titmarsh has only laughed at him, so there is no harm there.  It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, you know.”

“Such a wind as that, my Lord, with due respect to you, shall never do good to me.  I have learned in the past few years what it is to make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness; and that out of such friendship no good comes in the end to honest men.  It shall never be said that Sam Titmarsh got a place because a great man was in love with his wife; and were the situation ten times as valuable, I should blush every day I entered the office-doors in thinking of the base means by which my fortune was made.  You have made me free, my Lord; and, thank God!  I am willing to work.  I can easily get a clerkship with the assistance of my friends; and with that and my wife’s income, we can manage honestly to face the world.”

This rather long speech I made with some animation; for, look you, I was not over well pleased that his Lordship should think me capable of speculating in any way on my wife’s beauty.

My Lord at first turned red, and looked rather angry; but at last he held out his hand and said, “You are right, Titmarsh, and I am wrong; and let me tell you in confidence, that I think you are a very honest fellow.  You shan’t lose by your honesty, I promise you.”

Nor did I:  for I am at this present moment Lord Tiptoff’s steward and right-hand man:  and am I not a happy father? and is not my wife loved and respected by all the country? and is not Gus Hoskins my brother-in-law, partner with his excellent father in the leather way, and the delight of all his nephews and nieces for his tricks and fun?