have
been contented enough,--as are other ordinary young men with their
ordinary young women. He would probably have risen to no enthusiasm
of passion. But as things had gone he was as another Paris who had
torn a Helen from her Menelaus,--only in this case an honest Paris,
with a correct Helen, and from a Menelaus who had not as yet made
good his claim. But the subject was worthy of another Iliad, to be
followed by another Aeneid. By his bow and his spear he had torn
her from the arms of a usurping lover, and now made her all his
own. Another man would have fainted and abandoned the contest, when
rejected as he had been. But he had continued the fight, even when
lying low on the dust of the arena. He had nailed his flag to the
mast when all his rigging had been cut away;--and at last he had won
the battle. Of course his Clara was doubly dear to him, having been
made his own after such difficulties as these.

"I'm not one of those who easily give way in an affair of the heart,"
he said to Mr. Littlebird, the junior partner in the firm, when he
told that gentleman of his engagement.

"So I perceive, Mr. Tribbledale."

"When a man has set his affection on a young lady,--that is, his
real affection,--he ought to stick to it,--or die." Mr. Littlebird,
who was the happy father of three or four married and marriageable
daughters, opened his eyes with surprise. The young men who had come
after his young ladies had been pressing enough, but they had not
died. "Or die!" repeated Tribbledale. "It is what I should have done.
Had she become Mrs. Crocker, I should never again have been seen in
the Court,"--"the Court" was the little alley in which Pogson and
Littlebird's office was held,--"unless they had brought my dead body
here to be identified." He was quite successful in his enthusiasm.
Though Mr. Littlebird laughed when he told the story to Mr. Pogson,
not the less did they agree to raise his salary to L160 on and from
the day of his marriage.

"Yes, Mr. Fay," he said to the poor old Quaker, who had lately been
so broken by his sorrow as hardly to be as much master of Tribbledale
as he used to be, "I have no doubt I shall be steady now. If anything
can make a young man steady it is--success in love."

"I hope thou wilt be happy, Mr. Tribbledale."

"I shall be happy enough now. My heart will be more in the
business,--what there isn't of it at any rate with that dear creature
in our mutual home at Islington. It was luck