ontinual bother about
such things." And Mr Gresham, feeling that that difficulty was tided
over for a time, and that the immediate pressure of little debts
would be abated, stretched himself on his easy chair as though he
were quite comfortable;--one may say almost elated.

How frequent it is that men on their road to ruin feel elation such
as this! A man signs away a moiety of his substance; nay, that were
nothing; but a moiety of the substance of his children; he puts
his pen to the paper that ruins him and them; but in doing so he
frees himself from a score of immediate little pestering, stinging
troubles: and, therefore, feels as though fortune has been almost
kind to him.

The doctor felt angry with himself for what he had done when he saw
how easily the squire adapted himself to this new loan. "It will make
Scatcherd's claim upon you very heavy," said he.

Mr Gresham at once read all that was passing through the doctor's
mind. "Well, what else can I do?" said he. "You wouldn't have me
allow my daughter to lose this match for the sake of a few thousand
pounds? It will be well at any rate to have one of them settled. Look
at that letter from Moffat."

The doctor took the letter and read it. It was a long, wordy,
ill-written rigmarole, in which that amorous gentleman spoke with
much rapture of his love and devotion for Miss Gresham; but at the
same time declared, and most positively swore, that the adverse
cruelty of his circumstances was such, that it would not allow him to
stand up like a man at the hymeneal altar until six thousand pounds
hard cash had been paid down at his banker's.

"It may be all right," said the squire; "but in my time gentlemen
were not used to write such letters as that to each other."

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. He did not know how far he would
be justified in saying much, even to his friend the squire, in
dispraise of his future son-in-law.

"I told him that he should have the money; and one would have thought
that that would have been enough for him. Well: I suppose Augusta
likes him. I suppose she wishes the match; otherwise, I would give
him such an answer to that letter as would startle him a little."

"What settlement is he to make?" said Thorne.

"Oh, that's satisfactory enough; couldn't be more so; a thousand a
year and the house at Wimbledon for her; that's all very well. But
such a lie, you know, Thorne. He's rolling in money, and yet he talks
of this beggarly