But after dinner came the time when the painfullest scene was daily enacted.  Mrs. Chump drank Port freely.  To drink it fondly, it was necessary that she should have another rosy wineglass to nod to, and Mr. Pole, whose taste for wine had been weakened, took this post as his duty.  The watchful, pinched features of the poor pale little man bloomed unnaturally, and his unintelligible eyes sparkled as he emptied his glass.  His daughters knew that he drank, not for his pleasure, but for their benefit; that he might sustain Martha Chump in the delusion that he was a fitting bridegroom, and with her money save them from ruin.  Each evening, with remorse that blotted all perception of the tragic comicality of the show, they saw him, in his false strength and his anxiety concerning his pulse’s play, act this part.  The recurring words, “Now, Martha, here’s the Port,” sent a cold wave through their blood.  They knew what the doctor remarked on the effect of that Port.  “Ill!” Mrs. Chump would cry, when she saw him wink after sipping; “you, Pole! what do they say of ye, ye deer!” and she returned the wink, the ladies looking on.  Not to drink a proper quantum of Port, when Port was on the table, was, in Mrs. Chump’s eyes, mean for a man.  Even Chump, she would say, was master of his bottle, and thought nothing of it.  “Who does?” cried her present suitor, and the Port ebbed, and his cheeks grew crimson.

This frightful rivalry with the ghost of Alderman Chump continued night after night.  The rapturous Martha was incapable of observing that if she drank with a ghost in memory, in reality she drank with nothing better than an animated puppet.  The nights ended with Mr. Pole either sleeping in his arm-chair (upon which occasions one daughter watched him and told dreadful tales of his waking), or staggering to bed, debating on the stairs between tea and brandy, complaining of a loss of sensation at his knee-cap, or elbow, or else rubbing his head and laughing hysterically.  His bride was not at such moments observant.  No wonder Wilfrid kept out of the way, if he had not better occupation elsewhere.  The ladies, in their utter anguish, after inveighing against the baneful Port, had begged their father to delay no more to marry the woman.  “Why?” said Mr. Pole, sharply; “what do you want me to marry her for?” They were obliged to keep up the delusion, and said, “Because she seems suited to you as a companion.”  That satisfied him.  “Oh! we won’t be in a hurry,” he said, and named a day within a month; and not liking their unready faces, laughed, and dismissed the idea aloud, as if he had not earnestly been entertaining it.