hilst he was in need. Whatever he
wanted was his as much as mine. I could not understand how the necessity
of the family should, in truth, be so extreme as he described it, for
after all many a poor family lived upon very much less; but I uttered
none of these objections, checking them with the thought that Clive,
on his first arrival at Boulogne, entirely ignorant of the practice of
economy, might have imprudently engaged in expenses which had reduced
him to this present destitution. (I did not know at the time that Mrs.
Mackenzie had taken entire superintendence of the family treasury--and
that this exemplary woman was putting away, as she had done previously,
sundry little sums to meet rainy days.)

I took the liberty of asking about debts, and of these Clive gave me
to understand there were none--at least none of his or his father's
contracting. "If we were too proud to borrow, and I think we were wrong,
Pen, my dear old boy--I think we were wrong now--at least, we were too
proud to owe. My colourman takes his bill out in drawings, and I think
owes me a trifle. He got me some lessons at fifty sous a ticket--a pound
the ten--from an economical swell who has taken a chateau here, and has
two flunkeys in livery. He has four daughters, who take advantage of the
lessons, and screws ten per cent upon the poor colourman's pencils and
drawing-paper. It's pleasant work to give the lessons to the children;
and to be patronised by the swell; and not expensive to him, is it, Pen?
But I don't mind that, if I could but get lessons enough: for, you see,
besides our expenses here, we must have some more money, and the dear
old governor would die outright if poor old Sarah Mason did not get her
fifty pounds a year."

And now there arrived a plentiful supper, and a bottle of good wine,
of which the giver was not sorry to partake after the meagre dinner at
three o'clock, to which I had been invited by the Campaigner; and it
was midnight when I walked back with my friend to his house in the upper
town; and all the stars of heaven were shining cheerily; and my dear
Clive's face wore an expression of happiness, such as I remembered in
old days, as we shook hands and parted with a "God bless you."

To Clive's friend, revolving these things in his mind, as he lay in
one of those most snug and comfortable beds at the excellent Hotel des
Bains, it appeared that this town of Boulogne was a very bad market for
the artist's talents; and that