over the
shop; I call that being above one's business in every way."

"Je suis au-dessus de mes affaires," as old Bonzig proudly said when
he took a garret over the Mont de Piete, in the Rue des Averses.

* * * * *

Barty's courtship didn't last long--only five or six months--during
which he made lots of money by sketching little full-length
portraits of people in outline and filling up with tints in
water-color. He thus immortalized my father and mother, and Ida
Scatcherd and her husband, and the old Scatcherds, and lots of other
people. It was not high art, I suppose; he was not a high artist;
but it paid well, and made him more tolerant of trade than ever.

He took the upper part of a house in Southampton Row, and furnished
it almost entirely with wedding-gifts; among other things, a
beautiful semi-grand piano by Erard--the gift of my father.
Everything was charming there and in the best taste.

Leah was better at furnishing a house than at drawing and
music-making; it was an occupation she revelled in.

It is not perhaps for me to say that their cellar might hold its own
with that of any beginners in their rank of life!

Well, and so they were married at Marylebone Church, and I was
Barty's best man (he was to have been mine, and for that very
bride). Nobody else was there but the family, and Ida, whose husband
was abroad; the sun shone, though it was not yet May--and then we
breakfasted; and John Gilpin made a very funny speech, though with
tears in his voice; and as for poor Maman-belle-mere, as Barty
called her, she was a very Niobe.

They went for a fortnight to Boulogne. I wished them joy from the
bottom of my heart, and flung a charming little white satin slipper
of Mrs. Gibson's; it alighted on the carriage--_our_ carriage,
by-the-way; we had just started one, and now lived at Lancaster
Gate.

It was a sharp pang--almost unbearable, but, also, almost the last.
The last was when she came back and I saw how radiant she looked.
And as for Barty, he was like

"the herald Mercury,
New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill!"

and he had shaved off his beard and mustache to please his wife.

* * * * *

"From George du Maurier, Esqre., A.R.W.S., Hampstead Heath,
to the Right Honble. Sir Robert Maurice, Bart., M.P.:

"My Dear Maurice,--In answer to your kind letter, I shall be proud
and happy to il