wife was leaning on his
arm, and on such an occasion as this even Robinson had consented to
her presence. She was dressed from head to foot in magenta. She wore
a magenta bonnet, and magenta stockings, and it was said of her that
she was very careful to allow the latter article to be seen. The
only beauty of which Sarah Jane could boast, rested in her feet and
ankles.

But on the other side of Mr. Brown stood a pair, for whose presence
there George Robinson had not expressed his approbation, and as to
one of whom it may be said that better taste would have been shown on
all sides had he not thus intruded himself. Mr. Brisket had none of
the rights of proprietorship in that house, nor would it be possible
that he should have as long as the name of the firm contained within
itself that of Mr. Robinson. Had Brown, Jones, and Brisket agreed
to open shop together, it would have been well for Brisket to stand
there with that magenta shawl round his neck, and waving that magenta
towel in his hand. But as it was, what business had he there?

"What business has he there? Ah, tell me that; what business has he
there?" said Robinson to himself, as he sat moodily in the small back
room upstairs. "Ah, tell me that, what business has he here? Did
not the old man promise that she should be mine? Is it for him that
I have done all; for him that I have collected the eager crowd of
purchasers that throng the hall of commerce below, which my taste has
decorated? Or for her--? Have I done this for her,--the false one?
But what recks it? She shall live to know that had she been constant
to me she might have sat--almost upon a throne!" And then he rushed
again to his work, and with eager pen struck off those well-known
lines about the house which some short time after ravished the ears
of the metropolis.

In a following chapter of these memoirs it will be necessary to
go back for a while to the domestic life of some of the persons
concerned, and the fact of Mr. Brisket's presence at the opening of
the house will then be explained. In the meantime the gentle reader
is entreated to take it for granted that Mr. William Brisket was
actually there, standing on the left hand of Mr. Brown, waving high
above his head a huge magenta cotton handkerchief, and that on his
other arm was hanging Maryanne Brown, leaning quite as closely upon
him as her sister did upon the support which was her own. For one
moment George Robinson allowed himself to loo