noxious atmosphere of the room acting upon her excited
feelings and delicate frame, rendered the support of her companion
necessary as they quitted it together.

There was an air of superiority about them both, and something in their
appearance so unusual in such a place, that a respectful silence was
observed until the _whirr--r--bang_ of the spring door announced that
they were out of hearing. It was broken by the wife of the ex-fruiterer.

'Poor creetur!' said she, quenching a sigh in a rivulet of gin-and-water.
'She's very young.'

'She's a nice-looking 'ooman too,' added the horse-dealer.

'What's he in for, Ikey?' inquired Walker, of an individual who was
spreading a cloth with numerous blotches of mustard upon it, on one of
the tables, and whom Mr. Gabriel Parsons had no difficulty in recognising
as the man who had called upon him in the morning.

'Vy,' responded the factotum, 'it's one of the rummiest rigs you ever
heard on. He come in here last Vensday, which by-the-bye he's a-going
over the water to-night--hows'ever that's neither here nor there. You
see I've been a going back'ards and for'ards about his business, and ha'
managed to pick up some of his story from the servants and them; and so
far as I can make it out, it seems to be summat to this here effect--'

'Cut it short, old fellow,' interrupted Walker, who knew from former
experience that he of the top-boots was neither very concise nor
intelligible in his narratives.

'Let me alone,' replied Ikey, 'and I'll ha' wound up, and made my lucky
in five seconds. This here young gen'lm'n's father--so I'm told, mind
ye--and the father o' the young voman, have always been on very bad,
out-and-out, rig'lar knock-me-down sort o' terms; but somehow or another,
when he was a wisitin' at some gentlefolk's house, as he knowed at
college, he came into contract with the young lady. He seed her several
times, and then he up and said he'd keep company with her, if so be as
she vos agreeable. Vell, she vos as sweet upon him as he vos upon her,
and so I s'pose they made it all right; for they got married 'bout six
months arterwards, unbeknown, mind ye, to the two fathers--leastways so
I'm told. When they heard on it--my eyes, there was such a combustion!
Starvation vos the very least that vos to be done to 'em. The young
gen'lm'n's father cut him off vith a bob, 'cos he'd cut himself off vith
a wife; and the young lady's father he behaved even worser and mor