he fire (occasioned probably by a spark falling from the
landlady's lamp amongst the straw under the staircase) had been
extinguished: and Mrs. Sweetbread, who had at length been roused at the
back, now made her appearance; and with many expressions of regret for
what had happened to Mr. Schnackenberger, who had entirely
re-established himself in her esteem by his gold-laden purse, and also
by what she called his 'very handsome behaviour' to the horse-dealer,
she requested that he would be pleased to step into one of her back
rooms; at the same time, offering to reinstate his clothes in wearable
condition by drying them as rapidly as possible: a necessity which was
too clamorously urgent for immediate attention--to allow of the dripping
student's rejecting her offer.

CHAPTER VI.

IN WHAT MANNER MR. JEREMIAH PREPARED HIMSELF FOR THE BALL.

As Mr. Jeremiah stood looking out of the window for the purpose of
whiling away a tedious forenoon, it first struck his mind--upon the
sight of a number of men dressed very differently from himself--that
his wardrobe would scarcely match with the festal splendour of the
_fete_ at which he was to be present in the evening. Even if it had been
possible to overlook the tarnished lustre of his coat, not much
embellished by its late watery trials upon the golden sow, yet he could
not possibly make his appearance in a surtout. He sent therefore to one
tailor after another: but all assured him that they had their hands much
too full of business to undertake the conversion of his surtout into a
dress coat against the evening; still less could they undertake to make
a new one. Just as vainly did he look about for shoes: many were on
sale; but none of them with premises spacious enough to accommodate his
very respectable feet.

All this put him into no little perplexity. True it was, that Mrs.
Sweetbread had spontaneously thrown open to his inspection the wardrobe
of her deceased husband. But even _he_ had contrived to go through this
world in shoes of considerably smaller dimensions than Mr. Jeremiah
demanded. And from a pretty large choice of coats there was not one
which he could turn to account. For, to say nothing of their being one
and all too short by a good half ell, even in the very best of them he
looked precisely as that man looks who has lately slaughtered a hog, or
as that man looks who designs to slaughter a hog.

Now, then, when all his plans for meeting the exigenci