A
MAN MADE OF MONEY.

BY

DOUGLAS JERROLD.

WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS ON STEEL

BY JOHN LEECH.

LONDON:

PUBLISHED AT THE

PUNCH OFFICE,

85, FLEET STREET.

1849.

LONDON:
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

Mr. Jericho when can you let me have some Money?

A MAN MADE OF MONEY.

CHAPTER I.

“Mr. Jericho, when can you let me have some money?”

This curious question was coldly put by a gentlewoman in morning undress to a man in gown and slippers. The reader, who is always permitted to wear the old cloak of the old stage mystery—the cloak that maketh invisible—must at once perceive the tender relation that lives and flourishes between the interesting person who puts this familiar interrogative, and the being who suffers it. They are man and wife. The marriage certificate is legible in every line of Mrs. Jericho’s face. She asks for money with a placid sense of right; it may be, strengthened by the assurance that her debtor cannot escape her. For it is a social truth the reader may not have overlooked, that if a man be under his own roof, he must be at home to his own wife.

“I ask again, Mr. Jericho, when can you let me have some money?”

Mr. Jericho made no answer. He could not precisely name the time; and he knew that whatever promise he made, its performance would be sternly exacted of him by the female then demanding. Whereupon, Mr. Jericho laid down his pen, and resignedly upturned his eyeballs to the ceiling.

“When—can—you—let—me—have—some—money?”

There is a terrible sort of torture, the manner of which is to let fall cold water drop by drop upon the shaven head of the sufferer. We think Mrs. Jericho had never heard of this cruelty; and we are almost prepared to be bound for her, that she would have suffered herself to be cut into little diamond pieces ere, knowing the mode of torment, she would in any way have imitated it. And upon her incorporate self too—her beloved husband! Impossible. Nevertheless love, in its very idleness—like a giddy and rejoicing kitten—will sometimes wound when most playful. The tiny, tender claws will now and then transgress the fur.

Mrs. Jericho, without at all meaning it, distilled the question, letting it fall, cold syllable by cold syllable, upon the naked ear of her husband. Mr. Jericho bounced up in his chair; and then, like a spent ball, dropt dumbly down again. He had for a few moments raised himself above the earthy and material query of Mrs. Jericho, and with his eyes fixed upon the ceiling, was contemplating an antipodean fly that holding on with the rest of his legs, was passing two of them over his head and collar-bone, as flies are accustomed curiously to do. Mr. Jericho—so rapid is thought, especially when followed by a creditor—Mr. Jericho had already taken refuge in the republic of flies—for that flies, unlike bees, are not monarchical, is plain to any man who contemplates their equality and familiarity in his sugar-basin and other places—and was beginning to envy the condition of that domestic insect that had the run of his house, the use of his very finest furniture, gratis,—when he, the nominal master, the apparent possessor thereof, had truly no lawful hold thereupon.

What shall we say of a man of a decent and compact figure, a man of middle height; who nevertheless wishing to stand two inches taller in the world than fairly beseems him, consents to be stretched by the rack in the hope of walking the higher for the pulling?—Now Mr. Jericho was this foolish man. He wanted to stand higher in the world than his simple means allowed him; and he had submitted himself to the rack of debt, to be handsomely drawn out. To get appearance upon debt is, no doubt, every bit as comfortable as to get height upon the rack. The figure may be expanded; but how the muscle of the heart, how all the joints are made to crack for it.

Mrs. Jericho—when last she spoke—dropt her question in the coldest, and most measured manner. Mr. Jericho, recalled from the land of flies, with curved lips, looked silently, sternly at the life-tenant of his bosom. And now the syllables fall hotly, heavily, as drops of molten lead.

“When can I have some money?” and Mrs. Jericho’s figure naturally rose with the question.

Mr. Jericho jumped from his seat the better to measure himself to his wife’s attitude. His first purpose was to swear; the oath was ready; but some good anatomical genius twitched a muscle, the jaw of Jericho closed, and the unuttered aspick died upon his tongue. He would not swear; he would not enter upon that coward’s privilege; he felt the soreness of great provocation; felt that the smallest and least offensive oath would do him sudden and mysterious good. Nevertheless, he swallowed the emotion, striking his breast to keep the passion down. He would be cold as cream.

Mrs. Jericho, however, having the right of arithmetic upon her side, repeated her question; asking it with a terrible calmness, at the same time, as though to make the query stinging, waving her right hand before her husband’s face, with a significant and snaky motion.—“When can I have some money?”

“Woman!” cried Jericho, vehemently; as though at once and for ever he had emptied his heart of the sex; and, rushing from the room, he felt himself in the flattering vivacity of the moment a single man. The transient feeling fell from him as he ran up stairs; and ere he had begun to shave, all his responsibilities returned with full weight upon him. “I’m sure, after all, I do my best to love the woman,” thought Jericho, as he lathered his chin, “and yet she will ask for money.”

Mrs. Jericho, baffled but not subdued, half-confessed to herself that there never was such a man; and then, beginning a little household song—familiar to families as winter robin—she thought she would go out. She wanted to make a little purchase. She had tried it before; there was nothing like shopping for lowness of spirits; and—yes, she remembered—she wanted many things. She would go forth; and—as Jericho was in his airs—she would lay out money on both sides of the street.

And Mr. Jericho, as he shaved, quietly built up the scheme of a day’s pleasure for himself and three special friends. As his wife was in one of her aggravating tempers, he thought it an opportunity—sinful to let pass—to have a little quiet dinner somewhere: he could hardly decide upon the place; but a quiet banquet, at which the human heart would expand in good fellowship, and where the wine was far above a doubt.

Shopping and a dinner! Thus was the common purse to bleed in secret, and at both ends.

Mr. Jericho drest himself with unusual care. He was a man not without his whimsies; and believed that a good dinner was eaten with better enjoyment, when taken in full dress. “I hold it impossible”—he would say—“quite impossible, for a man to really relish turtle in gown and slippers. No; when turtle was created, it was intended to be eaten in state; eaten by men in robes and golden chains, to a flourish or so of silver trumpets.” Mrs. Jericho was fully aware of this marital superstition. Thus, when with an eye—a wife’s eye—at the bed-room door, she saw her husband slide down stairs as though the bannister was buttered, she knew from his dress that it was a day out; and when the disturbed air wafted back the scent of lavender from the linen of her lord, mingled with huile des roses from his locks,—it will not surprise the student of human nature, when we aver that the heart of the married woman almost sank within her.

Speedily recovering herself, Mrs. Jericho determined upon her best and brightest gown; her richest shawl; her most captivating bonnet. These things endued, she took her purse, and as the bank-paper crumpled in her resolute palm, catching a departing look at the glass, it was plain to herself that she smiled mischief.

Mrs. Jericho had the profoundest opinion of the powers of her husband: she believed him capable of any amount of money. Nevertheless, the man would reject the flattery sometimes with argument, sometimes with indignation. Again and again the husband assured his wife, he must—and no help for it—die a beggar; but the woman armed her heart with incredulity—she laughed, and would not believe it. Indeed, it seemed her one purpose to show and to preach an inextinguishable belief in the pocket of her husband. Everywhere, she made converts. Tradesmen bowed down to her and believed her. On all sides, dealers—cautious, knowing men, made circumspect by wives and children—humbled themselves at the door of her pony phaeton, taking orders. Mrs. Jericho did so possess them with a faith in Jericho, that had she required the doorway to be laid with velvet or cachemire, there would have been no scruple of hesitation in the dealer; the foot-cloth would have been surely opened out, and put down. Moreover, Mrs. Jericho was aided by her two daughters whom, on her second marriage, she had handsomely presented to Mr. Jericho; further enhancing the gift with a son; a young gentleman declared by the partiality of friends to be born for billiards.

Mr. Jericho was forty when he married; therefore that, in one day, he should find himself the father of three children, was taking the best means to make up for the negligence of former years.

Mrs. Captain Pennibacker was made a widow at two-and-twenty by an East Indian bullet; but it was not until she had laboured for eight years to become calm about Pennibacker, that she fluttered towards Jericho. And thus, at one blow, she made him her second husband, and the second father of Pennibacker’s son and daughters. Offering such treasures to Mr. Solomon Jericho, she naturally thought he could not make too much of them. And for a season, Mr. Jericho showed a proper sense of his good fortune; yet, though his wife would never fail to assure him that he possessed a priceless treasure in herself and children, as time wore on, the ungrateful man would now and then look doubtfully at the family jewels.

Somehow, the Pennibackers failed to see in Mr. Jericho a flesh and blood father-in-law. From their earliest introduction to him, they considered him as they would consider a rich plum cake; to be sliced, openly or by stealth, among them. As they grew up, Mr. Jericho merely held in their opinion the situation of the person who paid the bills. It was, we say, the household superstition that Jericho had an unknown amount of wealth. Hence, he met with little thanks for what he gave; for the recurring thought would still condemn him for what he kept back. He possessed a sea of money; and yet he was mean enough to filter his gold by drops. In a word, he never gave anything that he, the donor, did not appear to the son or daughter receiving, the paltriest of human creatures.

And let the truth be said. Mr. Jericho was persecuted by the natural growth of his own falsehood. If at home he sat upon thorns, from his own tongue had dropt the seed that produced the punishment. In early times he had sown broadcast, notions of his abounding wealth; and the pleasant lies, as lies will do, had come up prickles. They grew thick in his daily path. Scarcely could he set foot forth without treading upon them.

The widow Pennibacker, it will at once be understood, had married Jericho wholly and solely for the sake of her children. It was, at the cost of any personal sacrifice, a duty she owed her infants to provide them with a wealthy father. She, herself—and we seek, we ask no other testimony than her own declaration—she would have been only too happy to join the dear deceased. But she had a duty to fulfil—a stern duty that held her to the earth. And she shrank not from its performance. No; suppressing her higher feelings, she gave her hand to Solomon Jericho, and chastised herself to think with calmness upon Pennibacker in his Indian tomb. She offered up—it was her frequent expression to all her bosom friends—she offered up the feelings of the widow to the duties of the mother. For what a man was Pennibacker! Especially in his grave. But such indulgent thought softens even asperity towards the departed. A natural and wholesome tenderness. The grave is the true purifier, and in the charity of the living, takes away the blots and stains from the dead.

When widow Pennibacker was first introduced to Mr. Jericho, he was whisperingly, confidentially, recommended to her indulgent notice as—a City Gentleman. Hence, Jericho appeared to the imagination of the widow, with an indescribable glory of money about him. She was a woman of naturally a lively fancy; a quality haply cultivated by her sojourn in the East, where rajahs framed in gold and jewels upon elephants were common pictures: hence, Jericho of the City of London was instantaneously rendered by the widow a man of prodigious wealth. She gave the freest, the most imaginative translation of the words—City Gentleman. Though not handsome, he was instantly considered to be most precious. Had she looked upon the Idol Ape, Tinum Bug, whose every feature is an imperial jewel set in the thickest skull of gold, and then cast a glance at Jericho, she would, we fully believe it, have chosen the City Gentleman in preference to the idol; so far, in the dizzied judgment of an impulsive, imaginative woman, did Solomon Jericho outshine Tinum Bug.

And much, it must be granted, is to be allowed to Mrs. Pennibacker as a woman and a mother. A City Gentleman! What a vision; what exhalations rise from the ink that, like magic drops fallen from Circe’s finger tips, create the radiant animal upon the white sheet before us! What a picture to the imagination, the—City Gentleman! Calm, plain, self-assured in the might of his wealth. All the bullion of the Bank of England makes back-ground details; the India-house dawns in the distance; and a hundred pennants from masts in India Docks tremble in the far-off sky.

Great odds these, against the simplicity of woman! The Bank, the India-house, and a hundred ships! Mrs. Pennibacker had huge strength of character; but she succumbed to the unknown power of visionary wealth; to the mysterious attributes of the City Gentleman. No man could less look the part, yet Jericho bowed to the widow, a perfect enchanter.

Again, Jericho was charmed, elevated by the graciousness of the lady. Like an overlooked strawberry, he had remained until in his own modesty he began to think himself hardly worth the gathering. Therefore, when Mrs. Pennibacker vouchsafed to stoop to him, he was astonished at her condescension, and melted by his own gratitude. For Mrs. Pennibacker was a majestic woman. She had brought back nothing of the softness of the East. She was not—she never had been—an oriental toy for the grown child, man. It would have been hard to couple her with thoughts of love-birds, and antelopes and gazelles. No; she rather took her place with those legendary Indian queens who hide their softness under golden bucklers; whose bows are strung with tiger-gut; and whose feminine arrows, if parrot-feathered, are fanged with mortal steel. In the picture of an ancient panther-hunt, you would have looked to see such a figure as the figure of Mrs. Pennibacker, thrusting a spear with a dread smile of self-approbation in the bowels of the objecting pard.

And then, Jericho himself had in this case imagination too: indeed, everybody has, when money is the thought, the theme. The common brain will bubble to a golden wand.

It was whispered, sharply whispered to Jericho, that the widow had many relations, many hopes in India. Immediately, Jericho flung about the lady all the treasures of the East. Immediately she stood in a shower-bath of diamonds; elephants’ teeth lay heaped about her; and rice and cotton grounds, and fields of opium, many thousands of acres of the prodigal east, stretched out on all sides of her, and on all sides called her mistress. Yet for all this, Solomon Jericho was ordinarily a dull, matter-of-fact man. Talk to him of Jacob’s ladder, and he would ask the number of the steps.

All his life had Jericho trod upon firm earth; but widow Pennibacker whipped him off his leaden feet, and carried him away into the fairy ground of Mammon; and there his eyes twinkled at imaginary wealth, and his ears burned and stood erect at the sound of shaken shadowy money-bags.

And so, each trusting to each, Solomon Jericho and Sabilla Pennibacker wooed and won each other; and the winning over, each had to count the gains. It was very strange. Jericho himself could not bear to think of the folly, the crime of the omission. Such neglect had never before betrayed him. Why had he not assured himself of the woman’s property, ere he made the woman his own? And then, for his cold comfort, he would remember that he had, on two or three occasions touched a little gravely upon the subject, whereupon Mrs. Pennibacker so opened her large, black, mysterious orbs, that his soul, like a mouse when startled by Grimalkin’s eyes—ran back into its hole. Again and again—it was a wretched satisfaction for the married man to think it—the question had been upon his tongue; when some smile of haughty loveliness would curve the widow’s lips and—how well he recollected the emotion—he felt himself the meanest wretch to doubt her.

Mrs. Pennibacker had, on her part, just played about the property of Jericho; but, with the trustingness of her sex, she was more than satisfied when Jericho, with all the simplicity of real worth, spoke calmly, yet withal hopefully, of the vast increase of profit arising from his platina mines. The word “platina” sent Mrs. Pennibacker to her Encyclopædia, which, however, comforted her exceedingly. She had instinctively known it all along; but she now felt assured,—Solomon Jericho, the holder of mines, possessed wealth inexhaustible. Being a City Gentleman, of course he sold his platina on the Stock Exchange.

The wedding was very gorgeous. Very rarely are two people joined together with so much expense. Nevertheless the contribution of either party—had the other known it—would have somewhat shaken Hymen; if, indeed, it had not wholly frightened him out of the church. Mrs. Pennibacker, when introduced to Jericho, was so deep in debt, that often, let folks try as they would, they could not see her. And Jericho—doubtless from a short supply of platina—was an object of extreme solicitude to a large number of dealers. When, however, it was understood that the widow was to be married to a rich man in the City, the lady found the very handsomest outfit for herself and children made delightfully easy. And Jericho, bearing in mind the heavy expense of an intoxicating honeymoon, readily obtained the means, when his circle—and every man has a circle, though of the smallest—rang with the news that he was in imminent likelihood of marrying the widow of an Indian Nabob!

And so bridegroom and bride—with a mutual trust even beyond mutual expectation—walked to the altar, there to be welded into one. They were married at St. George’s Church,—married in the bosom of a few surrounding friends. The bride’s children were present, and cast a mixed interest of pensiveness and pleasure on the ceremony. The bride had told her bridesmaids that, “It would cost her a struggle, but the dear children should be present; it was right they should. They ought to have the sacrifice impressed upon their minds in the most solemn way; the sacrifice that their poor mother consented to make for them. Nobody but herself knew what a struggle it was; but, it was her duty, and though her heart was with dear Pennibacker,—yes, she would go through with it. Mr. Jericho had given the dear girls the most beautiful lace frocks; and to Basil a lovely gold hunting-watch; therefore, they ought and they should, witness the sacrifice.”

And Miss Pennibacker and Miss Agatha Pennibacker, like little fairies, clothed in muslin and lace from elfin-looms, saw the sacrifice with a vivacity of heart that almost spirted out at the corners of their lips; and Basil Pennibacker, a gaunt, reedy boy of twelve, did nothing during the ceremony but take out his new gold hunting-watch—open it—snap it to—and return it again, as though he had already had a glimpse of the preparations for the wedding-breakfast, and with his thoughts upon all the delicacies of the season, was impatient for the sacrifice to be completed.

And the last “Amen”—the last blow on the rivet—was struck, and Solomon Jericho and Sabilla Pennibacker were man and wife. Whereupon, in a hysteric moment, the bride turning to her children, took the three in one living bunch in her arms, and sweeping them over to Jericho, said—“You are their father now.”

Turning to the church books of St. George’s we find that the date of this interesting deed of gift makes it about eight years to the date of the particular emphatic question with which Mrs. Jericho, as with a flourish of a silver trumpet, opened this little history.

CHAPTER II.

It was what we will venture to call a vinous hour of the morning, when Mr. Jericho returned home after the dinner eaten abroad in defiance of his own household gods, we fear sadly despised upon the occasion. For Mr. Jericho, with accessory boon-fellows, had partaken of a luxurious repast; little caring that his own stinted lares were served with, at best, metaphoric cold mutton. Mr. Jericho had tested the best resources of the larder and cellar of the Apollo Tavern; and full of meat and wine, and his brain singing with fantastic humours, he had surveyed the river Thames with simpering complacency; had seen big-bellied ships, stowed with India and Africa, drop silently with the tide towards their haven. It was impossible to enjoy a serener evening or a nobler sight. The setting sun, with a magnificence quite worthy of the west-end, coloured all things gold and ruby; the black hulls of ships glowed darkly and richly; and their sails were, for the time, from Tyrian looms. The gorgeousness of the hour enriched every common object with glorious beauty. Every cold, mean common-place of the common day seemed suffused in one wide harmonious splendour. And the brain of Jericho, meditating the scene, was expanded and melted into it; and in that prodigal wealth of colour, the illusion a little assisted by the swallowed colours within him, Jericho felt himself a part and parcel of the absorbing richness. The wine in his heart, a Bacchus’ jack-o’-lantern, reflected the rosy, golden light that came upon him.

This sweet illusion lasted its pleasant time, fading a little when the bill was rung for. Nevertheless, Jericho, by the force of the scene and the wine, felt himself in much easier circumstances than the hard tyranny of truth, when he was in a calm condition to respect its dictum, was likely to allow. And so, at that hour when sparrows look down reproachfully from their eaves at the flushed man trying the street-door—at that penitential hour, with the hues of the past romantic evening becoming very cold within him—Mr. Jericho stood beneath his own oppressive roof.

Mrs. Jericho was gone to bed.

Mr. Jericho breathed a little lighter. Such a load was taken off him, that he mounted the staircase tenderly, as though he trod upon flowers; as though every woollen blossom in the carpet from the stair to the bed itself was living heart’s-ease; which it was not.

Being somewhat ashamed of Mr. Jericho who, as it has been shown, left his wife to the solitude of her dinner-table, whilst he, luxurious spendthrift, could dine with company abroad,—we should be very happy if we could, without any more ado, put him to bed at once, and indignantly tucking him up, and with perhaps an allowed allusion to the sort of head that awaited him in the morning, let the good-for-nothing fellow snore till the curtain-rings danced again, allowing him only to wake up in time for the next chapter. But this we cannot do. The stern, iron moral it is our wish to impress upon the world—yielding as it always is to such impressions—compels us to steady Mr. Jericho to his bed-side; and even when there, not for awhile to leave him.

In the reproachful quietude of his dressing-room, Jericho prepared himself for his couch. Tenderly did his fingers dwell upon and wander about buttons. He caught a sight of himself in the looking-glass, and—to dodge his conscience—set himself to feign to whistle: and then it struck him it must be very, very late, his beard had grown so much. And the day in a moment seemed to have opened its broad, staring eye; and the sparrows cried more saucily; and the reproachful voice of the pigeons perched upon the chimney-top, came down in muffled murmur upon Solomon’s ear; and with a very little more he would have felt himself a villain.

The culprit placed his hand upon the handle of the bed-room door. Had he been a burglar with a felonious intention upon Mrs. Jericho’s repeater, instead of the man responsible for the rent and taxes of the house in which he at that moment stood in his shirt and shuddered,—had he, we say, at that point of time been an unlawful thief in posse, in lieu of a lawful husband in esse, his knees—unless he had been a very young and sensitive rogue indeed—could not have so knocked together. With his face crumpled into a thousand lines, he opened the door. What a blessing; the hinges did not that time creak, and before they always did! Assured by the omen, Jericho took a little bit of heart. The night-light was winking its last. There was not a sound. The bed-curtains hung like curtained marble. Jericho paused, turning up his ear. Still not a sound. Sabilla did not ordinarily sleep so light. The stillness was peculiar—curious—very odd.

“And if my Lucy should be dead!”

At the moment Solomon Jericho, though he did not know it, was quite as much the author of that line as William Wordsworth. Still silent? Hush! A gnat drones its tiny trump between the curtains. Ubi flos, ibi apis. Suddenly Jericho is assured; and with two long, soft strides, is at his own side of the bed. Sabilla is evidently in a sound, deep, sweet sleep. Untucking the bed, and making himself the thinnest slice of a man, Jericho slides between the sheets. And there he lies, feloniously still; and he thinks to himself—being asleep, she cannot tell how late I came to bed. At all events, it is open to a dispute; and that is something.

“Mr. Jericho, when can you let me have some money?”

With open eyes, and clearly ringing every word upon the morning air, did Mrs. Jericho repeat this primal question.

And what said Jericho? With a sudden qualm at the heart, and with thick, stammering tongue, he answered—“Why, my dear, I thought you were sound asleep.”

“I should be very happy if, like some people, I could sleep, Mr. Jericho. I should be very glad indeed if, like some people, I could leave the house and take my pleasure, and run into every sort of extravagance. But no! I must remain at home. But I tell you this, Mr. Jericho, I have made my mind up. Lying here, and being bitten by the gnats as I have been”—

“I’m sure, I’m very—very sorry”—

“Not you, indeed. No—no. You don’t care how I’m bitten; or, for that matter, who bites me. But that is not what I was going to say. What I was going to observe is this—Neither you nor any man in this world shall make a cat’s-paw of me.”

“I never thought of it. Never entered my head,” said Jericho, screwing his skull into the pillow.

“Nothing but a cat’s-paw, and I’m not come to that. I was deceived at the altar,” said Mrs. Jericho: “grossly, shamefully played upon; and I have been deceived ever since.”

“For the matter of that,” cried Jericho, a little doggedly, “I was deceived too. Of course, everybody said you’d money; and so I was deceived—grossly deceived,” cried Jericho, melting a little with a sense of his injury. “I don’t want to return to the subject, Mrs. Jericho. But of course I thought you rich.”

“Mercenary wretch! If the girls were only stirring, I’d get up,” was the threat. “I’m sure it’s time.”

“Just as you like, Mrs. Jericho: only be good enough to let me go to sleep. Bed,” said Jericho, making himself vigorously up for rest, “bed isn’t the place to talk in.”

“I don’t wish to talk,” replied Mrs. Jericho, “I don’t wish to exchange a word with such a creature as you are. All I want to know is this—When can you let me have some money?”

“Money!” gasped Jericho.

“Money!” repeated Mrs. Jericho, with inexorable resolution.

“Mrs. Jericho,” said the husband, bolting himself upright in bed, and looking aside, down upon the face of his unmoved wife—“will you permit me to sleep, now I’ve come to my own bed? I think it particularly hard when a man has been out all the day as I have been, toiling for his wife and family—I say I think it particularly hard”—

“I don’t want to prevent your sleeping, Mr. Jericho. Sleep as long as the sleeping beauty, and I’m sure I should be the last person to attempt to wake you. All I want to ask of you is what I asked in the morning. Nothing more. When shall I have some money?”

“Zounds, woman!”—cried Jericho.

“Don’t call me woman—man!” exclaimed Mrs. Jericho. “Major Pennibacker”—

“He was only a captain,” hiccupped Jericho.

“Major Pennibacker,” reiterated his widow, “a soldier and a gentleman, never called me woman yet. Glorious creature! His sword would rattle in its scabbard if he knew how I was treated.”

“Is this the time,” cried Jericho, a little fiercely, “the time to talk of swords and scabbards, with the sun shining in at the windows? Why can’t you let me go to sleep, and talk at the proper horns? After a man has been toiling and slaving for his wife and family”—

“No doubt. And I wonder how many wives—and how many families—that’s it!” cried Mrs. Jericho, with a strange, cutting significance, that instantly levelled her husband; for Solomon desperately stretched himself in the bed; and lugging the nightcap over his ears, turned round, determined upon plucking up sleep, like poppies, by the roots.

“I’m not to be deceived by your indignation, Mr. Jericho. I know everything, or else where could your money go to? However, as I said, I will no longer be made a cat’s-paw of. For eight years have I been married to you, under what I may call false pretences. People called you the Golden Jericho, or is it likely that I could have forgotten the heroic man who—I feel it—has a slight put upon him in his warrior’s grave, by your being in the nightcap you wear at this moment? However, he forgives me. At least, I trust”—and Mrs. Jericho spoke with a spasm—“I trust he does. It was all for the sake of his precious orphans that I am in the bed I am. Yes, Pennibacker”—and his widow cast up her eyes, as though addressing her first husband, looking down benignly upon her from the tester—“Yes, dear Pennibacker, you know for what I sacrificed the best of wives, and the most disconsolate of widows. I could have wished, like the Hindoo, to be burnt upon the pyre; I was equal to it; I could have rejoiced in it. But I re-married, unwillingly re-married, to sacrifice myself for our children. Yes, Pennibacker”—

“Damn Pennibacker!” cried Jericho.

“Mr. Jericho,” said Pennibacker’s widow, with her deepest voice, and with thunder brooding at her brows—“Mr. Jericho, will you dare to desecrate the ashes of the dead? Demon! Will you?”

“Well, then,” said Jericho, a little appalled, for an impartial circle had called Mrs. Jericho the Siddons of private life, she could so freeze her friends with her fine manner—“Well, then, let me go to sleep. It’s very hard, Mrs. Jericho; very hard, that you will always be throwing your husband’s ashes in my face.”

“No levity, sir; no levity,” said Mrs. Jericho, very ponderously. “Though unhappily I am your wife, I cannot forget that I am Miss Pennibacker’s widow.” And then Mrs. Jericho drew a sepulchral sigh; and then she hopefully added—“but he forgives me. However, as I believe I have observed once before, Mr. Jericho, I will no longer be made a cat’s-paw of.”

“Of course not. Why should you?” said Jericho. “I’m sure, for my part, I want a wife with as little of the cat as possible.” And then Jericho shrank in the bed, as though he had ventured too much.

Possibly Mrs. Jericho was too imperious to note the coarse affront; for she merely repeated—“Very well, Mr. Jericho: all I want to know is this—I ask to know no more. When—when will you let me have some money?”

As though the bed had been strown with powdered pumice, Jericho shifted and writhed.

“I don’t wish to annoy you, Mr. Jericho,” said the woman, with dread composure. “But you compel me, gracious knows, much against my nature, to ask when—when will you let me have some money?”

Jericho shook and groaned.

“It is much more afflicting to my nature, much greater suffering to me to ask, than it can be for you to hear. Major Pennibacker never had a pocket to himself. He, dear fellow, always came to me. Ha! how few men can appreciate the true dignity of married life. As I always used to say,—one heart and one pocket. However, as it’s quite time for me to get up; and as I suppose you intend to go to sleep—and as people will be here, and I must give them an answer of some sort,—permit me, Mr. Jericho, to ask you—I’m sure it’s painful enough to my feelings, and I feel degraded by the question—nevertheless, I must and will ask you,—when will you let me have some money?”

Jericho—as though a dagger had been suddenly struck up through the bed—bounced bolt upright. There was a supernatural horror in his look: even his own wife, familiar as she was with his violence, almost squealed. However, silently eyeing him through the small murderous loop-holes of her lace border, Mrs. Jericho saw her pale-faced husband snatch off his cap, holding it away at arm’s length: then, breathing hard and casting back his head, he cried in tones so deep and so unnaturally grating, that the poor woman, like a night-flower, shrank within herself at the first sound,—

“I wish to Heaven I was made of money!”

Mrs. Jericho, considerably relieved that it was no worse, added in a low, deep, earnest voice—“I wish to Heaven you were.”

Foolish and wicked wishes do not fly upwards, but there is no doubt of it, descend below; where, though they are but bodiless syllables, they are often fashioned by the imps into pins and needles, and straightway returned to the world to torment their begetter.

And Solomon Jericho, with a silly, sinful wish at his heart—a wish further emphasised by the thoughtless amen of his wife—subsided into muddled sleep; snoring heavily, contemptuously, at the loneliness of his spouse. She, poor woman, lay awhile, silently struggling with her indignation. At length, however, her feelings growing too strong for her, she got up the better to wrestle with them.

And Jericho was left alone—alone in bed? Not alone. He had desperately fitted his night-cap to his head, and resolute upon sleep, had punched his head deep, deep into his pillow. Mrs. Jericho would have doubted her eyes had she seen the creatures in her house; but standing upon a ridge of her husband’s night-cap, and looking wisely down upon her husband’s dreaming face, were two fleas. An elder and a younger flea.

Their ancestors had come from the far East, and carried the best royal blood within them. It would be no difficult matter to trace them up to the court of king Crœsus, whither they were first brought in the cloak of Æsop. Let it suffice, that from this Lydian stock descended the two fleas, at the time of our story, perched—like ruminating goats upon a ledge of rock—upon the night-cap of Jericho. Their progenitors had not come in, like many others, with the Conquest; but were brought to England in the train of a Persian Ambassador. After a wandering life, the race remained for some forty years comfortably settled in a lodging-house at Margate, bringing up a multitudinous family. From this stock came our two fleas, travelling, cosily enough, to London. How from the Apollo Tavern, where they first put up on their arrival in the metropolis, they made their way to the home of Jericho, passes our knowledge to declare. Very sure we are, that Mrs. Jericho believed she had no such creatures in her house.

Well, the two fleas having jumped upon the brow of Jericho, we shall, without any scruple, make use of them. They stand above the brain of the sleeper, and—being descended from the fleas of Æsop—shall, for the nonce, be made to narrate to the reader the vision of the dreaming victim.

“Miserable race!”—said the father flea, with its beautiful bright eye shining pitifully upon Jericho—“Miserable craving race! You hear, my son; man, in his greed, never knows when he has wherewithal. He gorges to gluttony, he drinks to drunkenness; and you heard this wretched fool, who prayed to heaven, to turn him—heart, brain and all—into a lump of money. Happily, it is otherwise with fleas. We take our wholesome, our sufficient draught, and there an end. With a mountain of enjoyment under our feet, we limit ourselves to that golden quantity—enough.”

“Therefore, oh, my sire, let us not, for our temperance, be gluttonous of self-praise. Seeing that fleas are the crowning work of the world; seeing that as sheep, and bullocks, and fish and fowl are made for man, and man for us; let us be charitable towards our labouring servant,—poor biped; our cook and butler.”

“My son, true it is, man feeds for us, drinks for us. Man is the labouring chemist for the fleas; for them he turns the richest meats and spiciest drinks to flea wine. Nevertheless, and I say it with much pain, man is not what he was. He adulterates our tipple most wickedly.”

“I felt it with the last lodgers,” said the younger flea. “They drank vile spirits: their blood was turpentine, with, I fear me, a dash of vitriol. How they lived at all, I know not. I always had the head-ache in the morning. Here, however”—and the juvenile looked steadfastly down upon the plain of flesh, the wide champain beneath him—“here, we have promise of better fare.”

“The soil is woundily hot; hard, and dry, and hot as a volcano; and—mercy me,” cried the elder, “how it throbs and heaves. Hark!”—and the flea inclined its right ear—“the fellow’s brain sings like a kettle. Now is he going off into a galloping dream. Our ancestors—some of whom, my son, as I have often told you, lived the bosom friends of conjurors and soothsayers—were, as many of their descendants are at the present day, to be met with amongst fortune-tellers and gypsies—our ancestors had the gift of following a dream in all its zig-zag mistiness. And the wisdom of our ancestors”—and here the flea raised itself upon its legs, and looked with a serene pride about it—“the wisdom of our ancestors has come down in its fullness upon myself; to be left, my dear child, whole and unimpaired, and I may add, unimproved to you.”

“What a sight is this,” cried the young flea, staring at Jericho’s face. “What an earthquake must be tumbling and rumbling in the fellow’s heart; and how his teeth clang together! Is that thunder? No. But did you ever hear such snoring?”

“In a minute, my son, and he’ll be in the thick of it. Attend; and I’ll follow him through the maze; showing you all the odd things that shower up and down in his brain, just as the golden air-bubbles of yesterday sparkled in his wine-glass. But first, my child, let us drink.” Saying this, the elder flea, raising itself pretty well upright, and with its strong claws taking a firm hold of the flesh beneath, for better purchase, struck its lance home, and opening its shoulders, drew up, with its sucker, such a hearty draught of drink, that Jericho, the unconscious cup-bearer, gave a sudden twist, so deep and hearty was the pull of the drinker. “Very good; very good, indeed,” said the flea. “There’s a fine delicate bouquet in it.”

“Humph,” cried the younger flea, “for my part, I think ’twould bear a little more body. But, my sire, as I’ve heard you say, there’s no judging truly from the first cup. Here goes again. Why, how the fellow kicks!”

Mr. Jericho’s Marvellous Dream.

“Such, my son,” said the elder flea, “is man: such his wastefulness upon himself, such his injustice to what—cocking his nose towards the stars—he calls the lower animals. At least, two bottles of wine, a gill or more of brandy, to say nothing of a draught or two of malt, are burning in his arteries, and in hot mist rising to his brain. Now, what work, what watching, what risk of limb and life—what multiplication of toil—to produce the various beverage he has guzzled! What digging and ploughing of the land; what vine-dressing; what sailing upon the stormy seas; what glass-blowing; what bottling, before the liquor, like a melted jewel, shone in his eye, and trickled down his throat! Yet here he lies, and with no conscious labour of his own, is at once the wine-press and distiller for the fleas. And when we seek to take our temperate draught—smallest drops; merest seed-rubies—how the miser kicks, and flounders, and when he has sense enough, what wicked words at times he pitches at us! But such”—said the elder flea, preparing itself for another stoup—“such is man.” And again the flea pierced the wine-skin, and sucked up another draught, and again Jericho plunged, and twisted.

“The bin improves,” said the younger flea, drinking very hard. “And yet, I’m sure there’s burgundy in it. Now, never but twice before have I tasted burgundy; and then I suffered for it; just as if the grapes were grown on a soil of sulphur. Nevertheless, ’tis a rare cellar this, after the turpentine and vitriol of our last lodgings: so, hang the headache, and let’s have t’ other bumper.”

“Not another drop,” cried the elder flea. “Let the poor wretch beneath us teach us moderation. Consider his face. How dead and stupified it looks! How it shone above the table last night; and what a piece of dirty dough it looks at this moment! What light was in the lamp, and now what dullness and smoke!”

“And yet,” said the younger flea, “the dough begins again to work. Surely, he’s on with his dream now.”

“Now, he’s fairly off. A while ago, and the brain was only fluttering—like a bird trying its wings—but now, yes—now it’s off. Ha! ha! A very droll dream, even so far as it goes;” and the old flea looked very wise.

“Tell it, father; tell it. You never told me a dream before: surely,” said the young one, “I’m old enough to learn now.”

“Listen, my son, and be instructed. The sleeping man is at this moment following his heart. The thing has been plucked out of his bosom by a laughing little creature, with painted wings: a strange creature, half-elfin half-angel. The elf, or angel, or whatever it is, hugs the heart in its plump arms, and its eyes twinkle with mischief, and its cheeks are pitted with dimples, and its lips pout as over-full of the fun that will rise to them; and still away the child carries the heart.”

“And the man!—Where’s the man that owns it? Still following?” asked the young flea.

“Still following, and in a pretty pucker about his property. But, my son, be silent; and do not interrupt me. The elf, still flying with the heart, is now in the open country. A peaceful, quiet spot. Beautiful meadows, starred with daisies. Ha! they remind me of a scene of early youth. That green velvet quilt sprinkled with little silver flowers—the quilt of the sweet Princess of Satinskin—that sweet, beautiful quilt in the palace of”—

“Never mind the palace,” said the young flea. “You are now in the open country; keep to the meadow.”

And the elder flea, rebuked, proceeded. “There’s cattle and sheep in the meadows; and the boy, in sport, flies and flutters above them. And now he jumps from lamb’s back to lamb’s back, and the man still following, with all his eyes watching his heart, that the little elf, in the wildest fun, tosses up, like a ball in the air, catching it again, and again tossing it up, and”—

“I should guess something odd,” said the young flea: “for how the fellow here kicks; and how his face is broken into moving hills and vallies. How he moans, too, about his heart. Poor devil!”

“And now, the little imp trips across a bridge, that leads to a large wooden building—still in the open country. He runs into the building, the fellow following him, as though now he was sure of getting his heart back again. Not a bit. The youngster throws the heart to a strange-looking woman; a sort of Egyptian fortune-teller,—and she, with a sharp glittering knife, begins to cut the heart into little pieces.”

“Oh, ho! Look at his face,” cried the young flea. “And if he doesn’t shift and twist like a worm on a hook!”

“The woman cuts the heart into small pieces, and the owner of the heart—how his knees twitch up and down, and how his head rolls upon the pillow, at every touch of the knife—at length sits down in a sort of curious despair to see what will become of his heart. And now, he looks about him—yes, he knows he is in a paper-mill. And strangely enough appears to him a kind of living history of the rise and progress of paper. He sees the flags of Egypt growing in a ditchy nook—and red Egyptians pulling and peeling it. And here flourishes a field of bamboo, and here a Chinaman, with his side-long almond eyes, cuts and shreds the skin from the bark. And the dreamer seeing his heart in bits tossed into a trough, is suddenly smitten with the sense that his heart, the great machine and blood-pump of his life, is to be made into paper. He tries to protest against the injury. He tries to roar out, but not a word will come. He sits straining and gasping, and dumb withal, as a caught fish. And now, he sees the bits of his heart curiously sorted by these hags of women; gloomy and wild as sybils,—for, my son, I know what sort of folk sybils are from the wisdom of my ancestors; our great forefathers having been closely entertained by them.”

“Go on, father: I’m impatient to know what they make of the heart,” cried the younger flea.

“The women, with sharp hooks, pick out the little knots and hard bits from the heart, and then souse the sorted stuff into boding water: and then they cut the bits with a turning thing toothed with knives; cut it and shred it; and now what was a fine, firm, full-weight heart, labouring in and through life, in the bosom of this wretched tipsiness below us, is soft and liquid as a dish of batter. Nevertheless, bating a chalky paleness in the fellow’s face, he seems to do as well without his heart as with it.”

“But it can’t last, father; it can’t last. He must have something of a heart to live,” said the young flea.

“Be patient a minute, and you shall learn. Now, one of the hags scoops the batter edgewise into a little frame and shakes it and—presto!—all is done: the heart of the dreamer is worked up into I know not how many sheets—but there seems a lumping lot—a lumping lot of the finest and whitest paper.”

“Poor devil, I say again. He can’t live with that; he can’t go through life with a heart of paper.”

“Don’t interrupt me. Whilst you spoke, everything changed. At this moment, the imp that vanished when he threw the heart to the hags, now carries it in a square bundle upon his head; laughing and skipping along London streets; and the man without a heart still following his tormenter. My son, the imp and the man are now going up Ludgate Hill”—

“Do you know the place?” asked the younger flea.

“Perfectly well; many years ago—for what a vulgar error it is to think fleas short-lived—many years ago, I walked on a Lord Mayor’s day.”

“Walked!” cried the young flea.

“Walked; that is, was carried in the miniver fur of the alderman of the Fishmongers’ Company; and upon my life, a very noble sight it was. Yes, my child, I think I ought to remember that show, for it was on that very day, in that very miniver, I first met your poor mother. Ha! that was a happy day—and we saw all the fun from the beginning to the end; for we contrived to get upon the alderman, and sitting close and keeping quiet—for that’s an art fleas have to learn, if they would see, and not in the end be seen—sitting close in the nape of the alder man’s neck, we were present at the banquet. I shall never forget the beautiful sight we had, when the alderman got upon his legs to make a speech. Well, we were carried home and put to bed with the alderman, and from that time”—

“Never mind the alderman,” cried the pert young flea, “but get on from Ludgate-Hill.”

“While I’ve talked, the imp and the man have gone round St. Paul’s, and are now crossing into Cheapside. Shall I ever forget how, when we came to Cheapside, the giants—well, I won’t think of that now. The imp with the load of paper on his head runs by Bow-Church, and the dreamer here stretches after him. My son, both imp and man,” said the flea solemnly, “both imp and man have now entered the Bank of England.”

“The Bank of England!” repeated the young flea, impressed by the sudden seriousness of its parent.

There was a short pause. The elder flea, a little dry in the mouth with so much talking, again inserted its piercer in the skin beneath it, and drew up another glass of flea wine. And in this the son dutifully imitated the father.

“The imp,” continued the elder flea, much refreshed by the draught, “the imp has entered the Bank printing-office. The man without the heart, the poor wretch wriggling and moaning under our feet, resignedly drops upon a stool. He sits wringing his hands for his lost heart; and now his veins tingle, for he hears the creaking of presses. Their motion seems, strangely enough, his motion. And now, the imp that had vanished, comes back again, bringing in his arms the poor man’s heart.”

“It can’t be of any use to him, now,” said the younger flea.

“Of the best use, my child, as he thinks it. The imp jumps upon the man’s knee, and the heart—it has lost its red colour, and its flesh-like look, and as though all the blood had been discharged from it, is white as a rag, save that the veins show through it all black—yes, black as ink; the heart, nicely fitted by the imp, beats again in its place inside the sleeper. You see! how he smiles—and how his whole body heaves with the chuckle—as he again feels the old acquaintance. And now he can’t make too much of the imp; he throws his arms about him, and paws his little cheeks in drunken fondness. You hear! You hear, how the laugh gurgles in the fool’s throat,—and all because he’s got his heart back again.”

“And now, as the dream’s over, father—what say you to another drink?” asked the young flea.

“In a minute, for ’tisn’t over yet. No. The place is changed, and the sleeper is carried to see what appears to him Gold’s Grand Review in the Bank cellars.”

“What do you mean by Gold’s Review?” demanded the junior.

“The imp and the dreamer are in the Bank Cellars. Here, my son, in mighty bars—in bars that can break even the backs of emperors—is gold. The imp takes a new sovereign piece from its bosom, and holds it above its head. Like a small golden sun, it illumines the place. Whereupon, all the bars of gold become pigmy shapes, and all in action. Here we have a whole army—all in gold—marching, wheeling, forming into lines and squares. Here we have little golden shipwrights hammering at golden craft; here, cooks of gold sweating at golden dainties; here, in the cellar, all the works and labours, the commands and services of the world, are shown by the imp in action—drawn into life, for a brief space, from what was a moment before bars of inert metal. It is, my son, as if all the world outside of the walls of the Bank, was imitated by the world’s masters down in the Bank cellars. I can see the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen in little men of gold not bigger than an Alderman’s thumb: and here they act in the metal itself what the metal makes acted in the flesh outside.”

“And for what purpose—I don’t see the use of it,” said the young flea.

“As a farewell show to our dreamer here. And he is mightily pleased with it,—for he rubs his hands, and then rubs his heart as though he found all happiness there.”

“And has he found it, think you?” asked the youngster.

“Humph! That will be seen,” said the old one.

CHAPTER III.

It was mid-day when Mrs. Jericho next entered her bed-room. She came in, humming a little piece of a song. Whereupon, the culprit between the sheets took courage to observe—“I don’t think I ever passed so wretched a night.”

“Considering the night was over when you came home, Mr. Jericho, you of course are the best judge. How should I know anything about it?” Such was the home-thrust relentlessly given by Mrs. Jericho. She would not be mollified.

“I went, my dear,”—began Jericho.

The outraged wife would not be insulted. Suddenly twisting round, as though stung by the hypocritic tenderness, Mrs. Jericho desired the man to keep his fine words for people out of doors. Her eyes were at length opened; she had a long time—too long—been fondly blind; but at last she knew all; she was satisfied, and—she again repeated it—she would not be insulted.

Jericho was not to be diverted into a quarrel. Pacific man! He would struggle to keep the peace. Hence, in tones, feloniously intended to soften and cajole, he returned to what he called the terrors of the past night.

“If I were to live a thousand years, my love”—

“Love!” exclaimed Mrs. Jericho, and this time she turned full upon the offender. For a minute, she stood withering him from between the bed-curtains. And Jericho, not wholly lost to shame, dragged his night-cap over his brow, and shrinking, rolled himself upon the other side. With his heavy eye upon the parrots and parroquets perched and flying upon the bed-room paper that adorned the wall—for Mrs. Jericho, as she told her bosom friends, would have that paper at any price; the birds, and the palms, and the savannahs, as she said, so reminding her of past happiness with Pennibacker,—Jericho manfully continued:

“Yes, a thousand years, I shouldn’t forget last night.”

“Very likely not,” said Mrs. Jericho. “I’ve no doubt you deserve to remember it. I shouldn’t wonder.”

“You don’t know, my dear Sabilla”—Mrs. Jericho trod the room anew, impatient of such daring familiarity—“you don’t know what I’ve suffered. Such an extraordinary dream! I feel it now. It has almost killed me with bile. But it’s the usual case with me. An uncomfortable dream always does. Killed with bile.”

(The wretched hypocrite! With such baited cunning, he angled in the depths of woman’s tenderness for unmerited sympathy. But we trust the reader will feel a grim pleasure at his disappointment; he took none.)

“The dream, my love, the dream has quite scorched me up. I’m a man—as I believe you’ll give me credit for, dear Sabilla—a man with a mind above such things; otherwise, I should think something dreadful, very dreadful, was going to happen. Could you give me some soda-water?”

“I am very sure, Mr. Jericho, there is not a single drop of soda-water in the house.”

Hereupon the sufferer ventured to make a suggestion.

“Couldn’t you send for some?”

“Certainly not,” replied Mrs. Jericho, with instant decision. “If I cannot reclaim you to propriety, at least let me have the satisfaction, for the sake of your children, Pennib—Mr. Jericho—for their sake, let me, if possible, hide from an inquisitive world the vices of their father. Let me, at least, have such barren consolation.” Jericho was silent. In consequence thereof, Mrs. Jericho, with gushing fluency, continued—“I have no wish, sir, to busy the idle world with my private wrongs; none whatever.”

“I don’t see, my—my dear”—said Jericho, from under the clothes—“I don’t see why you should.”

“And yet you ask me to send the servants for soda-water at this time of the day. But what do you care how the domestics talk! How your conduct as a husband and a father is made the gossip of the neighbourhood! I can just fancy, at this hour, Edwin asking for soda-water; and how very cleverly you’d be brought upon the counter. Of course, servants will talk. No wages will stop ’em. And—no, Mr. Jericho, no”—and his wife spoke as though sternly re-assured in her purpose—“you may stab my heart if you will; but at least you shall not—that is, if I can help it—you shall not call about the vulgar and unfeeling world to gaze upon the bleeding wound.” And Mrs. Jericho sat down.

“I wouldn’t do such a thing, and you know I wouldn’t. Sabilla, dear, you know I wouldn’t.” Mrs. Jericho made no spoken reply; but her foot, tapping the carpet, was eloquent of unbelief and wrong.

There was no answering this, therefore Jericho adroitly sought to turn the current of discourse. For several minutes he hunted for a thought, his wife’s foot still accompanying him on the search. At last he deemed himself successful, and with the vivacity of good fortune, said—

“Can I have a cup of tea?”

Mrs. Jericho rose like a sultana, and with a cold dignity, and in deep searching tones, that made Jericho wince in the sheets, said—“Of course, Mr. Jericho; you are master in your own house. Of course, you can have a cup of tea.” And with this assurance, Mrs. Jericho slowly swept from her profaned bed-room.

“Well, and what does the old felon say? The scaly old griffin! What’s he got to answer for himself?”

A young gentleman close upon one of the privileges of legal manhood—the privilege of going to prison for his own debts—put this sudden question to Mrs. Jericho, on her instant return to the drawing-room, from the interview narrated above.

“Come, what is it? Will he give me the money? In a word,” asked the hurried youth, “will he go into the melting-pot like a man and a father?”

“My dear Basil, you mustn’t ask me,” replied Mrs. Jericho to her emphatic first-born.

“Oh, mustn’t I, though?” cried Basil. “It’s as little as I can do. Ha! you don’t know the lot of people that’s asking me. Bless you! they ask a hundred times to my once. Well, will old Jericho tip the loyalty? Did you give him my sentiment, mother, eh? Money—money’s like the air you breathe; if you have it not you die. Have you brought me the beggarly allowance?—If I don’t blush a hole in my cheek to take it! It’s disgusting. A hundred a year! Not enough to keep a blind man in dogs.”

“My dear Basil, where do you imbibe such extraordinary parallels?” asked Mrs. Jericho; and with her eyes feeding upon the knowing, impudent face of the young man, she affectionately adjusted his cravat. “What a careless child you are—I’m sure you don’t take care of yourself.”

“First make it worth my while, mother. Care! What’s the use of buttoning an empty pocket? But about this worse half of yours; this supernumerary father of mine. Only wished I’d ha’ guessed what he’s turned out. Little as I was, I’d ha’ forbid the banns—I would—if I’d jumped upon a three-legged stool to do it.”

Mrs. Jericho drew a deep, deep sigh, and tenderly pressed the hero in her arms.

“Don’t sigh, ma’am,” said the youth, “don’t sigh; for times are bad, and bobbin’s getting dearer.” Mrs. Jericho tapped the young gentleman on his cheek. “To business, as the sun said when he rose late—to business, my dear madam. What does that ruffian-in-law answer to my just proposal?”

“Basil, really, my dear Basil, I cannot listen: whatever Mr. Jericho’s faults may be, if I can endure them—if I can be silent—at least I may expect my children”—

“Not at all, my dear lady, not at all. Your children never said a word to the bargain. They only looked on while you were sold. They have all the freedom of English subjects, and may abuse your husband ad libitum. I do nothing rashly, dear madam; I’ve inquired into the law, and I know it. My allegiance, my dear lady, is due to my own buried father; and as I’m told, he was a gentleman”—

“Basil, don’t—pray don’t! You bring him up before me. Ha! Basil, your father was a man.”

“No doubt of it, my dear lady; no doubt of it, my revered mother;” and the young gentleman, with really a touch of grace, bent his head, and raised his mother’s hand to his lips. “Would shoot the fellow, my dear lady, who doubted it. Well, why did you hook-and-eye yourself to the individual up stairs? Why were you induced to drop upon the golden name of Pennibacker the tin extinguisher of Jericho? As Hamlet somewhere says, why did you leave that Primrose Hill of clover, to go to grass on Wormwood Scrubs?”

“I entreat you, Basil—I supplicate, my dearest boy, that you desist! You”—

“All right, my dear lady, all right, and got the receipt. What I meant to say was this. You sacrificed yourself for the good of your family?” And Basil Pennibacker, with wrinkled forehead, looked inquiringly about, gesticulating as though chewing his emotion. “Didn’t you?”

“I did, Basil, I did; but don’t grieve for that—I can be resigned; I have been resigned.”

“Like a tame lamb,” said Basil, bursting into metaphor, “like a tame lamb you wreathed your brow with orange flowers, and in the very handsomest manner gave yourself away. Can I forget it? Ought I to forget it? Ought my sisters to forget it? Never. You married our destroyer-in-law—pardon my feelings, my dear madam; as your dutiful son I must call him so: you married our cannibal-in-law, to make the fortunes of your innocent orphans? Did you not?”

“I did, Basil,” said Mrs. Jericho, and she shuddered. “Your father knows I did.”

“In which case, madam, as one of those orphans, it is my first duty to take care that your intentions are honourably carried out. Now, madam, can I see Mr. Jericho?”

“My dear child,” said Mrs. Jericho, “he is not yet up.”

“And nearly one o’clock—what an insult”—and Basil pointed towards the sun—“what a marked insult to that respectable luminary. Never mind. We’ll hold a little bed of justice in this matter. For I do assure you, my dear lady, I tremble for myself; I do indeed. I never was so disloyal in all my life; never.”

Let not Mr. Basil Pennibacker suffer in the opinion of the faithful subject. That young gentleman—it was his whim, his characteristic mode of speech—adopted the word disloyalty as his synonym of poverty.

“My good sir,”—we give in the way of illustration a speech of Basil’s to an earnest tailor—“my good sir, you know I always desire to respect the constituted authorities. I always like to have their images about me. But my good sir, I have not seen the face of the monarch, sir, no not on the smallest piece of silver, for a natural twelvemonth, sir. I never felt myself such a traitor, sir. Look here”—and Basil twitched out his empty purse—“look here; not a pennyweight of loyalty in it, sir. ’Pon my life, sir, I’ve quite forgotten the quarterings of my native land. I’m a quadruped, sir, and not a gentleman, if I know whether Britannia holds a trident or a dung-fork. I’m disgusted with life, sir; for I’ve no loyalty—not an ounce of loyalty.”

Thus, Mrs. Jericho—familiar with the figurative style of her son—was in no way alarmed, when he declared he felt himself the greatest traitor on earth; he had been so long lost to loyalty.

“I should be very sorry, my dear madam,” he added, “for the credit of the family, very sorry to be left alone with the crown, a blue bag in my hand, and the door open. I tremble, madam, at the picture. For I know it, my dear madam—I feel it, my affectionate parent—you would not like to see the head of your only and erring son upon Tower Hill. I’m sure, my dear lady, you could not survive that moment. Therefore, to prevent serious consequences, when am I to have an advance of loyalty?”

“My dear Basil, you are so impetuous. I have not yet had an opportunity”—

“Had an opportunity! Make one, my dear lady. But I see how it is; you shrink before the tyrant. The ruffian that you have ennobled by consenting to wear his name, refuses to make the advance. Did you tell him that with three years’ allowance down, I’d throw off five per cent. for the ready loyalty? And he refuses! Why, my dear lady, it’s next to embezzlement. Upon my life, I wish to treat the individual with respect; nevertheless, it does flash across my mind that it’s nowhere written that a man may not thrash his own father-in-law.”

“Basil, I will not hear this. I tell you, I will not. Whatever may be the faults of Mr. Jericho—and who should know them better than myself?—I cannot sanction such sentiments. At a proper season”—

“My dear maternal lady, money isn’t like green peas, coming in with a season; the proper season for money’s when money’s wanted. A season with me, my dear madam, that lasts all the year round, I can assure you,” and again Basil kissed the hand of his anxious parent.

“The truth is, Basil, I do believe that Mr. Jericho is very much pressed—very much. And you know he is indulgent to you; and so, you must not be hard upon him: indeed, my love, you must not. I am very much afraid,”—and Mrs. Jericho looked at the youth with new affection—“very much afraid that you’re an extravagant child.”

“’Pon my life, my dear madam, when I see what other young fellows do, I feel myself a mean man; sometimes despise myself. You don’t know how I struggle to keep down the miser in me. I’ve a dreadful idea sometimes, of what my end will be.”

“My dear Basil!” cried the mother, in tender alarm.

“Sometimes, dear lady, I look into the middle of next century, and see myself a wretched being. Long beard, nails like fish-hooks, one shirt a year, and dinners of periwinkles. Unless I exert all my strength of mind, I shall go off in mildew—die a miser. ‘He denied himself the common necessaries of life’—that’s what I sometimes fear will be my history—‘and thus, it is believed, hastened his wretched and untimely end.’”

“Basil! How can you!”

“That’s my fate, I fear. ‘On his room being searched, bank-notes to a large amount were found in an old tinder-box, and a hundred and fifty guineas of the time of George the Second, secreted in a German flute!’ Sometimes, when I’m melancholy and disloyal, I think that’s my fate; but I’ll struggle against the feeling,” said Basil with filial emphasis—“I will struggle, my dear lady.”

Whereupon Mrs. Jericho, haply comforted by his moral heroism, assured her boy that she would not let Mr. Jericho rest until he gave a definitive answer to his son-in-law’s moderate proposition.

“That is all I want to know, my dear lady. Whether I’m to stop short at sudden ruin, or to go on. I’m disgusted with life at present, but I’m open to any arrangement that shall make me change my opinion. Hallo! Aggy, why you’re come out of a rainbow.”

This sudden salutation was addressed to Miss Agatha Pennibacker who, fine and gauze-like as a dragonfly, floated into the room, and settled upon a sofa. “I have told you twenty times,” said the young lady with face severely set, “I will not be called Aggy. It’s hideous.”

“Then why don’t you change it? I say, mother, when are you going to consign these girls to India? Market’s full here. Bless you, such a glut of wedding-rings, I’m told they hang mackerel on ’em.” And Basil laughed saucily at Agatha; and Agatha pouted contemptuously.

“My dear Basil, I thought I heard your voice. Where have you been, you naughty child? I’m sure your poor sisters”—it was Monica Pennibacker who spoke as she entered—“your poor sisters might as well be without a brother.”

“That’s their opinion Nic,” and the youth was about to chuck Monica’s chin, when Monica drew herself like a pouter pigeon above the familiarity.

“When you can address your elder sister as you ought, Basil”—

“Come, if you’re going to act domestic tragedy I shall leave the house, and not take a check to come back,” said Basil. “What’s the matter with you both? Why, you’re as stiff as if you slept in sheet iron and boarded on whalebone. What’s the matter? Just wish you’d some of my troubles. Only yesterday, I lost Scrub my terrier; a love of a thing that would kill rats as fast as he could see ’em. Turn out a hundred rats, and in a twinkling he’d make ’em feel as if the eyes of Europe were on ’em. And that dog’s dead. Yet look at me,” and Basil passed his fingers through his hair, and with much fortitude, wiped an imaginary tear from his eye. “Scrub’s departed, yet I consent to breathe.”

“Scrub! Bringing terriers before ladies,” said Monica; “do not be so vulgar.”

“Indeed Basil,” chirrupped young Agatha, “you get so low, your sisters must disown you.”

“Poor little kittens,” cried Basil, and he dropped astride a chair, and shook his head at the young ladies, and sighed.—“Well, ’pon my life, I do wish you were out of this world!”

“Basil!” exclaimed the sisters, with a slight hysteric scream.

“Basil!” said Mrs. Jericho in deep, reproving thunder.

“You’re too good for this earth, you are, indeed, girls. Take it in the lump, and see what a lot of it’s beneath your notice. What a little of it’s really respectable. If it wasn’t unmanly, I could weep to think that my superfine sisters lived in the same wicked vulgar world that makes black-puddings and sells cat’s-meat.”

“My dear Basil,” said Mrs. Jericho in a tone of tender remonstrance, “do not be so extravagant. And you hurt your sisters; you do, indeed. A man”—and Mrs. Jericho took breath for a great utterance—“a man never so beautifully shows his own strength, as when he respects our softness.”

“No, indeed;” said the young ladies, speaking and shaking their heads in sympathy. “No!”

“I’ve a whole bank of respect in me, ma’am”—and Basil spread his fingers over his breast—“but I don’t pay a penn’orth of it to forged drafts. Now, softness is one thing; and—my dear parent I am quite prepared to prove what I say—and gammon is another.”

“If you allude to me, sir,”—said Monica, who had evidently made up her mind for an apothegm—“permit me once and for all to observe, that I don’t know what you mean.”

“That’s exactly my feelings on the subject, Monica dear,” cried Agatha.

“Now, children, I cannot endure this. It distresses me. These little quarrels lacerate me. You know, as I have often said, girls, I gave up everything for my children. Had I consulted my own feelings, I should have glided a solitary thing to—to your father. Therefore,”—here Mrs. Jericho drew forth her pocket-handkerchief; and both the girls, with a precision quite military, imitated the movement—“therefore, kiss one another and be friends.”

“With all my heart, and all my mouth,” said Basil. “Come along, girls”—and he folded his arms—“come along; I won’t bite.”

“What a creature you are!” cried Monica, wiping her eyes, as her mother moved her towards Basil.

“I dare say,” said the young Agatha, lifting herself upon her toes, to Basil, “I dare say, now, you don’t kiss Bessy Carraways in that manner.”

“Bessy Carraways,” said Basil, and the blood ran all over his face, his mother silently smiling at the emotion—“Bessy Carraways is a—a—” Basil stammered, then laughed—“a flower.”

“No doubt, dear Basil,” said Monica. “So are all young ladies of Bessy’s age; all flowers.”

“But I mean,” said Basil, “the natural thing. You see, my beloved sisters, there are two sorts of flowers. Now, Bessy isn’t too fine, or too good for this world. No; she’s a flesh and blood flower, growing upon the earth, and not thinking it too dirty for her: a flower that gives out the sweetness of her own natural self, and doesn’t think it too good for other people: and why, because she thinks no more about it, than a rose or a lily, or any other blossom that’s delicious and doesn’t know it.”

“Upon my word, Basil,” cried Mrs. Jericho, with joyous emphasis, “you are quite a poet.”

“Should be very sorry, ma’am, for the respectability of the family,” said Basil.

“Oh, quite a bard,” exclaimed Monica, with a sarcasm so very fine, it was unfelt by its object. “Now, you have given us one sort of female flower, what—dear boy—what is the other?”

“Certainly, Nic,” and Basil took his sister’s hand between his own. “The other flower doesn’t root in the world at all: earth’s too vulgar for it, dearest maid. It’s a flower so fine, it’s grown out of silk or velvet, and stands upon a wire stalk. Whatever scent it has, it isn’t its own: it doesn’t come out of itself, sweet girl, but out of the fashion. Very fine flowers; very bright, and very sweet, and very wax-like,—but still, my darling virgin, they are flowers, sown in silk, cultivated by the scissors, and perched upon stiffness. Not at all the sort of flower for my button-hole, I can tell you.”

“Dear no! Of course not,” cried the wicked Agatha, clapping her hands. “Bessy is, of course, your heart’s-ease.”

“My dear little puss,” said Basil, “I like Bessy, as I said, because she doesn’t think herself too good for other people: for all that, I’m not good enough for her. No, my little tortoise-shell, I shall always study humility, it’s safest—shall always think myself not good enough for any woman in the world. When I die, this is the epitaph I shall have grown over me:—‘He was so humble of spirit, he never lifted his thoughts to marriage. Reader, go and do likewise.’”

“My dear, strange Basil!” said Mrs. Jericho, with an incredulous laugh.

“Shall endeavour to leave five pounds a-year, to have that epitaph grown over me in mustard and cress. Five pounds a-year, ma’am, to the sexton, to keep my memory green.”

“I wonder what Miss Carraways would say if she heard you. But I know better,” said Monica. “I think, Agatha, we had better bespeak our posts as bridesmaids.”

“Wouldn’t suffer it, my darling girls,” said Basil. “If ever I was to marry—not that I ever shall; no, no,—I shall walk through the world with the mustard-and-cress steadily in my eye—you shouldn’t come near my wife. No, no; you’re too good, too fine, too embroidered, for the plain work of matrimony. Bless your little filagree hearts, before you marry you ought to perform quarantine in cotton, and serve seven years to pies and puddings.”

“Now, my dear, dear Basil”—

But Edwin, entering with a letter, destroyed Mrs. Jericho’s sentence in its early syllables.

“How curious!” cried Mrs. Jericho. “A letter from Mrs. Carraways. I know her dear hand from all my friends: there is such a flow of the lady about it. Ha! the party. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Carraways request the honour of—’ yes; we are all invited. This is to be the great fête of the season. Jogtrot Lodge will be burningly brilliant. The richest people will be there, and I have heard,” and Mrs. Jericho lowered her voice, “I have heard, some of the nobility.”

“No doubt,” said Basil; “just a lord or two, to keep ’em sweet.”

“Really, Basil, you ought to go and live in a cave, upon wild elder-berries; you ought,” said Monica; and then she turned to her parent, with a look of touching helplessness. “But, my dear mamma; how are we to go?”

“Yes, mamma,” said the forlorn Agatha, “how are we to go?”

Mrs. Jericho was looking about her for an answer, when Basil observed—“I see; got no gowns. Ask a woman to a tea-party in the Garden of Eden, and she’d be sure to draw up her eyelids, and scream—‘I can’t go without a gown.’”

“I think, Basil”—said Miss Monica, a little majestically,—“you had better confine yourself to terriers, and things that, perhaps, you understand. What do you know about gowns?”

“Very true, my eider-duck, very true. And, mother, as I am to show at the Lodge, I must really have a supply of loyalty: for I quite sympathise with the girls; feel it quite impossible, my honoured lady, to appear at the same table twice in the same toothpick.”

Mrs. Jericho, tapping her palm with the missive from Jogtrot Lodge, was descending deep into meditation. Who shall say what visions rose before her? It had always been her ambition that her girls should—in her own nervous words—“make a blow in marriage.” And she felt—felt as a mother—that, perhaps, the time was come. The girls should go armed at all points for conquest. “It shall be so,” said Mrs. Jericho, self-communing; and then she serenely smiled upon all her children.

“Proud to take your word for it, my revered lady,” said Basil. “So as I’ve got to look at another dog at Chambers,—though Scrub’s a first-love I shall never get over; yes, that dog’s a bruised place here, I can tell you”—and the mourner pointed his fore-finger to his heart—“I’ll be back in a couple of hours. I suppose, girls, you’ll go to this fête, like the rest of ’em, in your war-paint?” (The young ladies could not tell what he meant.) “Therefore, for the honour of the family, I must start a new tooth-pick. So, the loyalty I must have, my dear madam—the loyalty, my honoured parent, or in two hours I’m cutting my name with a shilling pen-knife in the Tower of London. Good morning,” and Basil, with his best grace, saluted the hand of his mother, filliped a kiss to both the girls, and strode from the room.

“Well, he is a handsome fellow,” said Monica.

“Handsome! he’s beautiful,” cried Agatha.

“Beautiful!”—exclaimed the mother, sighing—“he’s his own father, when I first met him. Yes; every look, and every tone a Pennibacker.”

“Mr. Jericho’s in his room, ma’am,” said Edwin the page.

“Oh!” said Mrs. Jericho.

CHAPTER IV.

Mr. Jericho sat in his study; and still his dream sat astride his spirit. Much of the first distinctness of the vision had faded in the morning light; nevertheless, he could piece out sufficient from its mistiness to make him dull and dumpish. He was not a superstitious man—certainly not. He would despise himself to be troubled by a dream; and then he shifted in his seat, and took up the newspaper and laid it down again. And then he thought all dreams were to be read backwards: and thus, his vision of the Bank Cellars was to be mockingly realised by the Queen’s Bench. And then he looked about him and took heart. Pooh! dreams were playthings for conjurors and gypsies; quite beneath the thought of a reasonable, a respectable man. He had often dreamt he had been hanged, and what had come of it? Nothing; good or bad. Mr. Jericho again took up the newspaper, and was endeavouring to interest himself in the affairs of his holiness the Pope, when the door opened. He winced, for he knew the feminine turn of the handle; he winced, we say, but nevertheless manfully with the paper before his eyes tried to keep his soul apart—far away at the Court of Rome. He heard the well-known rustling of the well-known skirts, and shivered just a little at the sound. Three or four of the softest footsteps told distinctly on the silence; and then—he knew it, though he saw it not—Mrs. Jericho in her morning muslin, subsided upon the opposite chair like a summer wave.

Mr. Jericho, almost without knowing it, had shifted himself to the Tyrol, and was trying to wonder at the next move of the Emperor of Austria, when Mrs. Jericho slightly coughed. Upon this, Jericho, a little agitated, found himself among the list of bankrupts; then he took flight to the House of Commons; where he became intensely absorbed by the Sugar Question, in which he would have been happy to be busied all the morning, when the wife of his bosom observed,—

“Mr. Jericho”——

“My dear, just now it is impossible,” said Jericho, shifting.

“What is impossible, Mr. Jericho?” asked the lady, with cold wonder.

“Why, just now—I—I cannot let you have any money,” said Jericho; and he wiped his brow.

“Did I ask for money, Mr. Jericho?” inquired the wife, wounded by the imputation.

“Eh! Why—humph! Didn’t you?” cried Jericho, somewhat incredulous.

“Will you oblige me, Mr. Jericho, by looking at that?” and Mrs. Jericho handed in the Carraways’ letter.

“Oh! Ha!” cried Jericho—“An invitation to their grand party. Very kind of ’em. People who ought to be cultivated. Considering the money they have, they don’t hold their head quite high enough, to be sure; nevertheless, very good people; very rich people. We shall go, my dear, of course.”

Mrs. Jericho folded her hands together, dropt them gently into her lap, then turned her very placid face full in the face of her husband, and slowly, and very anxiously put to him these words—“And how are we to go, Mr. Jericho?”

“How, my dear!” cried Jericho, in the darkest ignorance—“How would you go?”

“As your family, Mr. Jericho; as your wife and daughters”—said the lady, “we ought to go drest.”

“Why, yes, my dear”—said Jericho—“’twould look very particular, if you didn’t. He! he!”

“I admire wit, true wit, Mr. Jericho,” said the lady, with a pitying smile; “but no real gentleman ever descends to humour. Major Pennibacker never—but that is not the question. In a word, Mr. Jericho, your wife and daughters have no clothes to go in. Therefore, as you have decided to accept the invitation, may I ask, when can you let me have some money?”

Jericho dropt the paper, pushed himself from the table, and groaned.

“Oh, very well, very well”—said Mrs. Jericho, with cutting vivacity—“I can write a refusal: of course; we are ill, or are going out of town, or have a better engagement; anything will do.”

“Now, my dear creature, will you be reasonable?” cried Jericho, intreatingly. “What do you want?”

Mrs. Jericho replied with admirable brevity. “Want! Everything.”

“Impossible,” said Jericho.

“If we cannot go like your wife and daughters, we had better—far better for your credit—stay at home. Well, I did not think it would come to this”—said Mrs. Jericho, a little affected—“I did not think when I consented to marry you, that you would suffer my dear girls to want the necessaries of life.”

“Why, you don’t call fine extravagant clothes the necessaries of life?” cried Jericho.

“Yes, I do, sir; for such a party as that of Carraways; and for girls that are marriageable. Why all the world—that is, the richest people in the world—will be at the fête. And are the poor things, the dear girls, to remain always at home—kept in the dark, like jewels in boxes—for nobody to see them? Why, Mr. Jericho, you’re a king Herod to the dear children, and nothing better. Indeed to kill them outright, would be more merciful.”

“My dear creature”—Mrs. Jericho snatched an angry look at the word—“my dear Sabilla, what would you have me do? I’m sure I don’t want to keep the girls at home. I’m sure—” Jericho spoke with increasing earnestness—“I’m sure I should be delighted to see them married. Why, you must confess, my dear; you must own, my love, that it was only a fortnight ago, I gave you fifty pounds, for”—

“And what’s fifty pounds among three women?” asked Mrs. Jericho.

Jericho, with early habits of clerkship, quickly replied—“Sixteen pounds, thirteen and fourpence a piece.”

“I have told you, Mr. Jericho, that I admire wit—but no low humour. As much wit as you please, sir, but no buffoonery. Very well”—and Mrs. Jericho rose—“I’ll write and decline the engagement.”

“You know best, my dear, of course. I’ll leave it all to you;” and Jericho resumed the paper. A brief pause; and then he added,—“I’m sure I only wish I was made of wealth; but, I can’t make money, you know; I wish I could. The expenses of this family”—