eads before another,
they would have pitched upon me, for I had never harmed any of them, and
done little kindnesses to several.

"I know," says Abednego, "how you got the place. It was I who got it
you. I told Brough you were a cousin of Preston's, the Lord of the
Treasury, had venison from him and all that; and depend upon it he
expects that you will be able to do him some good in that quarter."

I think there was some likelihood in what Abednego said, because our
governor, as we called him, frequently spoke to me about my cousin; told
me to push the concern in the West End of the town, get as many noblemen
as we could to insure with us, and so on. It was in vain I said I could
do nothing with Mr. Preston. "Bah! bah!" says Mr. Brough, "don't tell
_me_. People don't send haunches of venison to you for nothing;" and I'm
convinced he thought I was a very cautious prudent fellow, for not
bragging about my great family, and keeping my connection with them a
secret. To be sure he might have learned the truth from Gus, who lived
with me; but Gus would insist that I was hand in glove with all the
nobility, and boasted about me ten times as much as I did myself.

The chaps used to call me the "West Ender."

"See," thought I, "what I have gained by Aunt Hoggarty giving me a
diamond-pin! What a lucky thing it is that she did not give me the
money, as I hoped she would! Had I not had the pin--had I even taken it
to any other person but Mr. Polonius, Lady Drum would never have noticed
me; had Lady Drum never noticed me, Mr. Brough never would, and I never
should have been third clerk of the West Diddlesex."

I took heart at all this, and wrote off on the very evening of my
appointment to my dearest Mary Smith, giving her warning that a "certain
event," for which one of us was longing very earnestly, might come off
sooner than we had expected. And why not? Miss S.'s own fortune was
70_l_. a year, mine was 150_l_., and when we had 300_l_., we always vowed
we would marry. "Ah!" thought I, "if I could but go to Somersetshire
now, I might boldly walk up to old Smith's door" (he was her grandfather,
and a half-pay lieutenant of the navy), "I might knock at the knocker and
see my beloved Mary in the parlour, and not be obliged to sneak behind
hayricks on the look-out for her, or pelt stones at midnight at her
window."

My aunt, in a few days, wrote a pretty gracious reply to my letter. She
had not determined, she said,