eighbourhood.

The unfortunate Mrs. Tibbs has determined to dispose of the whole of her
furniture by public auction, and to retire from a residence in which she
has suffered so much. Mr. Robins has been applied to, to conduct the
sale, and the transcendent abilities of the literary gentlemen connected
with his establishment are now devoted to the task of drawing up the
preliminary advertisement. It is to contain, among a variety of
brilliant matter, seventy-eight words in large capitals, and six original
quotations in inverted commas.

CHAPTER II--MR. MINNS AND HIS COUSIN

Mr. Augustus Minns was a bachelor, of about forty as he said--of about
eight-and-forty as his friends said. He was always exceedingly clean,
precise, and tidy; perhaps somewhat priggish, and the most retiring man
in the world. He usually wore a brown frock-coat without a wrinkle,
light inexplicables without a spot, a neat neckerchief with a remarkably
neat tie, and boots without a fault; moreover, he always carried a brown
silk umbrella with an ivory handle. He was a clerk in Somerset-house,
or, as he said himself, he held 'a responsible situation under
Government.' He had a good and increasing salary, in addition to some
10,000_l._ of his own (invested in the funds), and he occupied a first
floor in Tavistock-street, Covent-garden, where he had resided for twenty
years, having been in the habit of quarrelling with his landlord the
whole time: regularly giving notice of his intention to quit on the first
day of every quarter, and as regularly countermanding it on the second.
There were two classes of created objects which he held in the deepest
and most unmingled horror; these were dogs, and children. He was not
unamiable, but he could, at any time, have viewed the execution of a dog,
or the assassination of an infant, with the liveliest satisfaction.
Their habits were at variance with his love of order; and his love of
order was as powerful as his love of life. Mr. Augustus Minns had no
relations, in or near London, with the exception of his cousin, Mr.
Octavius Budden, to whose son, whom he had never seen (for he disliked
the father), he had consented to become godfather by proxy. Mr. Budden
having realised a moderate fortune by exercising the trade or calling of
a corn-chandler, and having a great predilection for the country, had
purchased a cottage in the vicinity of Stamford-hill, whither he retired
with the wife of his bosom, a