give it to her on condition that she would personally
settle with the creditors regarding her husband's liberation.

I think this was the happiest day that Mrs. Shandon and Mr. Finucane had
had for a long time. "Bedad, Bungay, you're a trump!" roared out Fin,
in an overpowering brogue and emotion. "Give us your fist, old boy: and
won't we send the Pall Mall Gazette up to ten thousand a week, that's
all!" and he jumped about the room, and tossed up little Mary, with a
hundred frantic antics.

"If I could drive you anywhere in my carriage, Mrs. Shandon--I'm
sure it's quite at your service," Mrs. Bungay said, looking out at a
one-horsed vehicle which had just driven up, and in which this lady took
the air considerably--and the two ladies, with little Mary between them
(whose tiny hand Maecenas's wife kept fixed in her great grasp), with
the delighted Mr. Finucane on the back seat, drove away from Paternoster
Row, as the owner of the vehicle threw triumphant glances at the
opposite windows at Bacon's.

"It won't do the Captain any good," thought Bungay, going back to his
desk and accounts, "but Mrs. B. becomes reglar upset when she thinks
about her misfortune. The child would have been of age yesterday, if
she'd lived. Flora told me so:" and he wondered how women did remember
things.

We are happy to say that Mrs. Shandon sped with very good success upon
her errand. She who had had to mollify creditors when she had no money
at all, and only tears and entreaties wherewith to soothe them, found no
difficulty in making them relent by means of a bribe of ten shillings
in the pound; and the next Sunday was the last, for some time at least,
which the Captain spent in prison.

CHAPTER XXXV. Dinner in the Row

Upon the appointed day our two friends made their appearance at Mr.
Bungay's door in Paternoster Row; not the public entrance through which
booksellers' boys issued with their sacks full of Bungay's volumes,
and around which timid aspirants lingered with their virgin manuscripts
ready for sale to Sultan Bungay, but at the private door of the house,
whence the splendid Mrs. Bungay would come forth to step into her chaise
and take her drive, settling herself on the cushions, and casting looks
of defiance at Mrs. Bacon's opposite windows--at Mrs. Bacon, who was as
yet a chaiseless woman.

On such occasions, when very much wroth at her sister-in-law's splendour
Mrs. Bacon would fling up the sash of her drawing-roo