humble servant, who was rather slimmer in those
days--twenty-nine of us had a dancing-master on purpose, and practised
waltzing in a room over the Egyptian Hall at the Mansion House. He was a
splendid man, that Count Schloppenzollern!"

"I am sure, ma'am," says I, "he had a splendid partner!" and blushed up
to my eyes when I said it.

"Get away, you naughty creature!" says Mrs. Roundhand, giving me a great
slap: "you're all the same, you men in the West End--all deceivers. The
Count was just like you. Heigho! Before you marry, it's all honey and
compliments; when you win us, it's all coldness and indifference. Look
at Roundhand, the great baby, trying to beat down a butterfly with his
yellow bandanna! Can a man like _that_ comprehend me? can he fill the
void in my heart?" (She pronounced it without the h; but that there
should be no mistake, laid her hand upon the place meant.) "Ah, no! Will
_you_ be so neglectful when _you_ marry, Mr. Titmarsh?"

As she spoke, the bells were just tolling the people out of church, and I
fell a-thinking of my dear dear Mary Smith in the country, walking home
to her grandmother's, in her modest grey cloak, as the bells were chiming
and the air full of the sweet smell of the hay, and the river shining in
the sun, all crimson, purple, gold, and silver. There was my dear Mary a
hundred and twenty miles off, in Somersetshire, walking home from church
along with Mr. Snorter's family, with which she came and went; and I was
listening to the talk of this great leering vulgar woman.

I could not help feeling for a certain half of a sixpence that you have
heard me speak of; and putting my hand mechanically upon my chest, I tore
my fingers with the point of my new DIAMOND-PIN. Mr. Polonius had sent
it home the night before, and I sported it for the first time at
Roundhand's to dinner.

"It's a beautiful diamond," said Mrs. Roundhand. "I have been looking at
it all dinner-time. How rich you must be to wear such splendid things!
and how can you remain in a vulgar office in the City--you who have such
great acquaintances at the West End?"

The woman had somehow put me in such a passion that I bounced off the
sofa, and made for the balcony without answering a word,--ay, and half
broke my head against the sash, too, as I went out to the gents in the
open air. "Gus," says I, "I feel very unwell: I wish you'd come home
with me." And Gus did not desire anything better; for he had ogled