night Barty and I dined at a little cagmag he used to frequent,
where he fared well--so he said--for a shilling, which included a
glass of stout. It was a disgusting little place, but he liked it,
and therefore so did I.

Then we called for Mrs. Gibson and Leah, and took them to the
Princess's to see Fechter in Ruy Blas, and escorted them home, and
had supper with them, a very good supper--nothing ever interfered
with the luxuriously hospitable instincts of the Gibsons--and a very
merry one. Barty imitated Fechter to the life.

"I 'av ze garrb of a _lacquais_--you 'av ze sole of _wawn_!"

This he said to Mr. Gibson, who was in fits of delight. Mr. Gibson
had just come home from his club, and the cards had been propitious;
Leah was more reserved than usual, and didn't laugh at Barty, for a
wonder, but gazed at him with love in her eyes.

When we left them, Barty took my arm and walked home with me, down
Oxford Street and up Southampton Row, and talked of Ruy Blas and
Fechter, whom he had often seen in Paris.

Just where a little footway leads from the Row to Queen Square and
Great Ormond Street, he stopped and said:

"Bob, do you remember how we tossed up for Leah Gibson at this very
spot?"

"I should think I did," said I.

"Well, you had a fair field and no favor, old boy, didn't you?"

"Oh yes, I've long resigned any pretensions, as I wrote you more
than a year ago; you may go in and win--si le coeur t'en dit!"

"Well, then, your congratulations, please. I asked her to marry me
as we crossed Regent Circus, Oxford Street, on the way home; a
hansom came by and scattered and splashed us. Then we came together
again, and just opposite Peter Robinson's, she asked me if my mind
was quite made up--if I was sure I wouldn't ever change. I swore by
the eternal gods, and she said she would be my wife; so there we
are, an engaged couple."

I must ask the reader to believe that I was equal to the occasion,
and said what I ought to have said.

* * * * *

Mrs. Gibson was happy at last; she was satisfied that Barty was a
"gentleman," in spite of the kink in his birth; and as for his
prospects, money was a thing that never entered Mrs. Gibson's head,
and she loved Barty as a son--was a little bit in love with him
herself, I believe; she was not yet forty, and as pretty as she
could be.

Besides, a week after, who should call upon her over the shop--there
was a private entrance of cours