t, Snob my boy, and I
have no doubt Mr. Perkins's Wallsends are supplied from his wharf. He is
in a flaming furnace when he hears coals mentioned. He and his wife and
his mother are very proud of Mrs. Sackville's family; she was a Miss
Chuff, daughter of Captain Chuff, R.N. That is the widow; that stout
woman in crimson tabinet, battling about the odd trick with old Mr.
Dumps, at the card-table.'

And so, in fact, it was. Sackville Maine (whose name is a hundred times
more elegant, surely, than that of Chuff) was blest with a pretty wife,
and a genteel mother-in-law, both of whom some people may envy him.

Soon after his marriage the old lady was good enough to come and pay him
a visit--just for a fortnight--at his pretty little cottage, Kennington
Oval; and, such is her affection for the place, has never quitted it
these four years. She has also brought her son, Nelson Collingwood
Chuff, to live with her; but he is not so much at home as his mamma,
going as a day-boy to Merchant Taylors' School, where he is getting a
sound classical education.

If these beings, so closely allied to his wife, and so justly dear to
her, may be considered as drawbacks to Maine's happiness, what man is
there that has not some things in life to complain of? And when I first
knew Mr. Maine, no man seemed more comfortable than he. His cottage was
a picture of elegance and comfort; his table and cellar were excellently
and neatly supplied. There was every enjoyment, but no ostentation. The
omnibus took him to business of a morning; the boat brought him back to
the happiest of homes, where he would while away the long evenings by
reading out the fashionable novels to the ladies as they worked; or
accompany his wife on the flute (which he played elegantly); or in any
one of the hundred pleasing and innocent amusements of the domestic
circle. Mrs. Chuff covered the drawing-rooms with prodigious tapestries,
the work of her hands. Mrs. Sackville had a particular genius for making
covers of tape or network for these tapestried cushions. She could make
home-made wines. She could make preserves and pickles. She had an
album, into which, during the time of his courtship, Sackville Maine bad
written choice scraps of Byron's and Moore's poetry, analogous to his
own situation, and in a fine mercantile hand. She had a large manuscript
receipt-book--every quality, in a word, which indicated a virtuous and
well-bred English female mind.

'And as for Nels