tomtit rampant and
a hog in armour. I thought this livery and crest-button rather absurd, I
must confess; though my family is very ancient. And heavens! what a roar
of laughter was raised in the office one day, when the little servant in
the big livery, with the immense cane, walked in and brought me a message
from Mrs. Hoggarty of Castle Hoggarty! Furthermore, all letters were
delivered on a silver tray. If we had had a baby, I believe Aunt would
have had it down on the tray: but there was as yet no foundation for Mr.
Smithers's insinuation upon that score, any more than for his other
cowardly fabrication before narrated. Aunt and Mary used to walk gravely
up and down the New Road, with the boy following with his great
gold-headed stick; but though there was all this ceremony and parade, and
Aunt still talked of her acquaintances, we did not see a single person
from week's end to week's end, and a more dismal house than ours could
hardly be found in London town.

On Sundays, Mrs. Hoggarty used to go to St. Pancras Church, then just
built, and as handsome as Covent Garden Theatre; and of evenings, to a
meeting-house of the Anabaptists: and that day, at least, Mary and I had
to ourselves,--for we chose to have seats at the Foundling, and heard the
charming music there, and my wife used to look wistfully in the pretty
children's faces,--and so, for the matter of that, did I. It was not,
however, till a year after our marriage that she spoke in a way which
shall be here passed over, but which filled both her and me with
inexpressible joy.

I remember she had the news to give me on the very day when the Muff and
Tippet Company shut up, after swallowing a capital of 300,000_l_. as some
said, and nothing to show for it except a treaty with some Indians, who
had afterwards tomahawked the agent of the Company. Some people said
there were no Indians, and no agent to be tomahawked at all; but that the
whole had been invented in a house in Crutched Friars. Well, I pitied
poor Tidd, whose 20,000_l_. were thus gone in a year, and whom I met in
the City that day with a most ghastly face. He had 1,000_l_. of debts,
he said, and talked of shooting himself; but he was only arrested, and
passed a long time in the Fleet. Mary's delightful news, however, soon
put Tidd and the Muff and Tippet Company out of my head; as you may
fancy.

Other circumstances now occurred in the City of London which seemed to
show that our Director