ack of the house, and showed him a large garden
attached to it.

"Now, Joseph," said she, "I've showed you a lodging-house and a
drying-ground; and I'm a cook and a clear-starcher, and I'm wild to keep
lodgers and do for 'em, washing and all. Then, if their foul linen goes
out, they follows it. The same if they has their meat from the cook-shop.
Four hundred pounds a year lies there a waiting for me. I've been at them
often to let me them premises. But they says no, we have got no horder
from the court to let. Which the court would rather see 'em go to rack
an' ruin for nothing, than let 'em to an honest woman as would pay the
rent punctual, and make her penny out of 'em, and nobody none the worse.
And to sell them, the price is two thousand pounds, and if I had it I'd
give it this minit. But where are the likes of you and me to get two
thousand pounds? But the lawyer he says, 'Miss Rouse, from _you_ one
thousand down, and the rest on mortgige at forty-five pounds the year,'
which it is dirt cheap, I say. So now, my man, when that house is mine,
I'm yours. I'm putting by for it o' my side. If you means all you say,
why not save a bit o' yours? Once I get that house and garden, you
needn't go to sea no more; nor you shan't. If I am to be bothered with a
man, let me know where to put my finger on him at all hours, and not lie
shivering and shaking at every window as creaks, and him out at sea. And
if you are too proud to drive the linen in a light cart, why, I could pay
a man." In short, she told him plainly she would not marry till she was
above the world; and the road to above the world was through that great
battered house and seedy garden in Chancery.

Now it may appear a strange coincidence that Nancy's price to Wylie was
two thousand pounds, and Wylie's to Wardlaw was two thousand pounds. But
the fact is it was a forced coincidence. Wylie, bargaining with Wardlaw,
stood out for two thousand pounds, because that was the price of the
house and garden and Nancy.

Now, when Wylie returned to England safe after his crime and his perils,
he comforted himself with the reflection that Nancy would have her house
and garden, and he should have Nancy.

But young Wardlaw lay on his sick bed; his father was about to return to
the office, and the gold disguised as copper was ordered up to the
cellars in Fenchurch Street. There, in all probability, the contents
would be examined ere long, the fraud exposed, and other unpleasant