"The laughing hyena, Mr. Jones?"

"Oh! beg pardon; that is what we call him in the room. He has got such a
curious laugh."

"Oh! I know the gent. He is a retired doctor. I wish he'd laugh less
and buy more: and HE gave you five pounds towards the young gentleman's
arm-chair! Well, I should as soon have expected blood from a flint. You
have got five pounds to pay, sir: so now the chair will cost your mamma
ten shillings. Give him the order and the change, Mr. Jones."

Christopher and Rosa talked this over in the room whilst the men were
looking out their purchases. "Come," said Rosa; "now I forgive him
sneering at me; his heart is not really hard, you see." Staines, on the
contrary, was very angry. "What!" he cried, "pity a boy who made one
bad bargain, that, after all, was not a very bad bargain; and he had no
kindness, nor even common humanity, for my beautiful Rosa, inexperienced
as a child, and buying for her husband, like a good, affectionate,
honest creature, amongst a lot of sharpers and hard-hearted cynics--like
himself."

"It WAS cruel of him," said Rosa, altering her mind in a moment, and
half inclined to cry.

This made Christopher furious. "The ill-natured, crotchety, old--the
fact is, he is a misogynist."

"Oh, the wretch!" said Rosa warmly. "And what is that?"

"A woman-hater."

"Oh! is that all? Why, so do I--after that Florence Cole. Women are
mean, heartless things. Give me men; they are loyal and true."

"All of them?" inquired Christopher, a little satirically. "Read the
papers."

"Every soul of them," said Mrs. Staines, passing loftily over the
proposed test. "That is, all the ones I care about; and that is my own,
own one."

Disagreeable creatures to have about one--these simpletons!

Mrs. Staines took Christopher to shops to buy the remaining requisites:
and in three days more the house was furnished, two female servants
engaged, and the couple took their luggage over to the Bijou.

Rosa was excited and happy at the novelty of possession and authority,
and that close sense of house proprietorship which belongs to woman. By
dinner-time she could have told you how many shelves there were in every
cupboard, and knew the Bijou by heart in a way that Christopher never
knew it. All this ended, as running about and excitement generally does,
with my lady being exhausted, and lax with fatigue. So then he made her
lie down on a little couch, while he went through his accounts.

When he had