of age--
good-looking, clever, and good-humoured; when he began to consider
seriously what was to be done next. On one of his periodical visits,
while he was revolving this question in his mind, the Marchioness came
down to him, alone, looking more smiling and more fresh than ever.
Then, it occurred to him, but not for the first time, that if she would
marry him, how comfortable they might be! So Richard asked her;
whatever she said, it wasn't No; and they were married in good earnest
that day week. Which gave Mr Swiveller frequent occasion to remark at
divers subsequent periods that there had been a young lady saving up
for him after all.

A little cottage at Hampstead being to let, which had in its garden a
smoking-box, the envy of the civilised world, they agreed to become its
tenants, and, when the honey-moon was over, entered upon its
occupation. To this retreat Mr Chuckster repaired regularly every
Sunday to spend the day--usually beginning with breakfast--and here he
was the great purveyor of general news and fashionable intelligence.
For some years he continued a deadly foe to Kit, protesting that he had
a better opinion of him when he was supposed to have stolen the
five-pound note, than when he was shown to be perfectly free of the
crime; inasmuch as his guilt would have had in it something daring and
bold, whereas his innocence was but another proof of a sneaking and
crafty disposition. By slow degrees, however, he was reconciled to him
in the end; and even went so far as to honour him with his patronage,
as one who had in some measure reformed, and was therefore to be
forgiven. But he never forgot or pardoned that circumstance of the
shilling; holding that if he had come back to get another he would have
done well enough, but that his returning to work out the former gift
was a stain upon his moral character which no penitence or contrition
could ever wash away.

Mr Swiveller, having always been in some measure of a philosophic and
reflective turn, grew immensely contemplative, at times, in the
smoking-box, and was accustomed at such periods to debate in his own
mind the mysterious question of Sophronia's parentage. Sophronia
herself supposed she was an orphan; but Mr Swiveller, putting various
slight circumstances together, often thought Miss Brass must know
better than that; and, having heard from his wife of her strange
interview with Quilp, entertained sundry misgivings whether that
person, in