Loaning money on mortgages of real estate, at about ten per centum, he found a very safe business; with this he united the shaving of undoubted paper, at from one to two per cent. a month.  Mr. Tompkins he had frequently shaved so closely as almost to make the blood come.  This was previous to the loan before alluded to.  Since that had been made, Mr. Tompkins rarely found it necessary to put good paper into Wolford’s hands for discount.  This the miser considered a dead loss, and he therefore determined that the loan should be taken up, and made in some quarter not likely to affect the shaving operations.

The declaration of Mr. Tompkins, that he could easily get some one else to take the mortgage, was not too well relished by Wolford, If he were sure this could be done, he would be content to accept an increase of interest and continue the loan, for the security was of the very safest kind, and ample.

“I must think about this,” said he to himself, as he walked homeward, after parting with Tompkins.  “I rarely make false moves, and should not like to do so in this case.”

CHAPTER II.

When Mr. and Mrs. Tompkins met, at dinnertime, neither of them appeared in the most happy frame of mind.  The lady looked especially disagreeable.  The meal passed in silence, and was eaten with little appetite.

As soon as her husband had retired from the house, which he did very soon after he had left the table, Mrs. Tompkins’s manner changed.

“Humph!” said she, tossing her head, “he needn’t begin the sulky game with me.  Two can play at that, as he ought to know very well.  I’ve set my heart on having a handsomer establishment than the purse-proud Mrs. Gileston, and, what is more, I will be gratified.  Mr. Tompkins is worth two dollars to her husband’s one, and yet she sweeps about the street with the air of a duchess, and never so much as looks me in the face, though I have been twice introduced to her.  But, I’ll be even with my lady!  I’ve set my heart on this, and will move heaven and earth to accomplish it.”

This half-spoken soliloquy will afford the reader some clue to the character of Mrs. Tompkins.  Her husband, to whom she had been married about ten years, had gradually risen from the position of a clerk to that of a merchant, in a small way, when the death of a distant relative put him in possession of about, thirty thousand dollars.  Up to that time, his wife, who was a poor girl when he married her, had been content to live in a style suited to their means.  But the moment a fortune so large in her eyes, fell to their share, her ideas expanded, and she suddenly became aware of the fact that she was a woman of no mean importance.

To Mr. Tompkins, this money came just in time to save him from failure.  He had started, as too many do, without capital, and had unwisely attempted to do more business than means so limited would bear.  He, consequently, knew the value of money far better than his wife, and was disposed to invest what he did not require in his business, in a safe way.  She, on the contrary, proposed that they should, at once, adopt a style of living in consonance with their bettered fortunes.