y decent
people the Joneses. I put Jones up to a thing which would have made
his fortune the week before last; but he wouldn't have it. Jones is
slow, and--well---- And Clara is with the Hopkinses: I believe so, at
least; and Maria is---- Confound me if I know where Maria is; but I
suppose she's somewhere. Her mother managed it all: I didn't
interfere. And so now, as you know the best and the worst, let's come
to dinner.'

An empty house is a dismal thing--almost as dismal as a dead body. The
echo, as you walk, is dismal; the blank, stripped walls, shewing the
places where the pictures and the mirrors have been, are dismal; the
bits of straw and the odds and ends of cord are dismal; the coldness,
the stillness, the blankness, are dismal. It is no longer a
habitation, but a shell.

In the dining-room stood a small deal-table, covered with a scanty
cloth, like an enlarged towel; and a baked joint, with the potatoes
under it, smoked before us. The foaming pewter-can stood beside it,
with a couple of plates, and knives and steel forks. Two Windsor
chairs, of evident public-house mould, completed the festive
preparations and the furniture of the room. The whole thing looked
very dreary; and as I gazed, I felt my appetite fade under the sense
of desolation. Not so Happy Jack. 'Come, sit down, sit down. I don't
admire baked meat as a rule, but you know, as somebody says--

"When spits and jacks are gone and spent,
Then ovens are most excellent,"
And also most con-ven-i-ent.

The people at the Chequers managed it all. Excellent people they are.
I owe them some money, which I shall have great pleasure in paying as
soon as possible. No man can pay it sooner.'

The dinner, however, went off with the greatest success. Happy Jack
was happier than ever, and consequently irresistible. Every two or
three minutes he lugged in something about his household gods and the
desolation of his hearth, evidently enjoying the sentiment highly.
Then he talked of his plans of taking a new and more expensive house,
in a fashionable locality, and furnishing it on a far handsomer scale
than the old one. In fact, he seemed rather obliged to the brokers
than otherwise for taking the quondam furniture off his hands. It was
quite behind the present taste--much of it positively ugly. He had
been ashamed to see his wife sitting in that atrocious old easy-chair,
but he hoped that he had taken a step which would change all for the
better.