e, and gradually increasing his business, was
held in very good esteem by his former employers, and invited sometimes
to tea at the Hermitage; for which entertainments he did not, in
truth, much care at first, being a City man, a good deal tired with
his business during the day, and apt to go to sleep over the sermons,
expoundings, and hymns, with which the gifted preachers, missionaries,
etc., who were always at the Hermitage, used to wind up the evening,
before supper. Nor was he a supping man (in which case he would have
found the parties pleasanter, for in Egypt itself there were not more
savoury fleshpots than at Clapham); he was very moderate in his meals,
of a bilious temperament, and, besides, obliged to be in town early in
the morning, always setting off to walk an hour before the first coach.

But when his poor Susan died, Miss Hobson, by her father's demise,
having now become a partner in the house, as well as heiress to the
pious and childless Zachariah Hobson, her uncle Mr. Newcome, with his
little boy in his hand, met Miss Hobson as she was coming out of
meeting one Sunday; and the child looked so pretty (Mr. N. was a very
personable, fresh-coloured man himself; he wore powder to the end,
and top-boots and brass buttons, in his later days, after he had been
sheriff indeed, one of the finest specimens of the old London merchant);
Miss Hobson, I say, invited him and little Tommy into the grounds of the
Hermitage; did not quarrel with the innocent child for frisking about in
the hay on the lawn, which lay basking in the Sabbath sunshine, and at
the end of the visit gave him a large piece of pound-cake, a quantity of
the finest hothouse grapes, and a tract in one syllable. Tommy was ill
the next day; but on the next Sunday his father was at meeting.

He became very soon after this an awakened man; and the tittling and
tattling, and the sneering and gossiping, all over Clapham, and the talk
on 'Change, and the pokes in the waistcoat administered by the wags
to Newcome,--"Newcome, give you joy, my boy;" "Newcome, new partner in
Hobson's;" "Newcome, just take in this paper to Hobson's, they'll do it,
I warrant," etc. etc.; and the groans of the Rev. Gideon Bawls, of
the Rev. Athanasius O'Grady, that eminent convert from Popery, who,
quarrelling with each other, yea, striving one against another, had yet
two sentiments in common, their love for Miss Hobson, their dread,
their hatred of the worldly Newcome; all the