lating_ you
called it)--and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with
paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till
daybreak--was there no pleasure in being a poor man? or can those neat
black clothes which you wear now, and are so careful to keep brushed,
since we have become rich and finical, give you half the honest vanity
with which you flaunted it about in that overworn suit--your old
corbeau--for four or five weeks longer than you should have done, to
pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen--or sixteen
shillings was it?--a great affair we thought it then--which you had
lavished on the old folio. Now you can afford to buy any book that
pleases you, but I do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old
purchases now.

"When you came home with twenty apologies for laying out a less number
of shillings upon that print after Lionardo which we christened the
'Lady Blanch'; when you looked at the purchase, and thought of the
money--and thought of the money, and looked again at the picture--was
there no pleasure in being a poor man? Now, you have nothing to do but
to walk into Colnaghi's, and buy a wilderness of Lionardos. Yet do you?

"Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield, and Potter's bar,
and Waltham, when we had a holiday--holidays and all other fun are gone
now we are rich--and the little handbasket in which I used to deposit
our day's fare of savory cold lamb and salad--and how you would pry
about at noon-tide for some decent house, where we might go in and
produce our store--only paying for the ale that you must call for--and
speculate upon the looks of the landlady, and whether she was likely to
allow us a tablecloth--and wish for such another honest hostess as Izaak
Walton has described many a one on the pleasant banks of the Lea, when
he went a fishing--and sometimes they would prove obliging enough, and
sometimes they would look grudgingly upon us--but we had cheerful looks
still for one another, and would eat our plain food savorily, scarcely
grudging Piscator[7] his Trout Hall? Now, when we go out a day's
pleasuring, which is seldom, moreover, we _ride_ part of the way, and go
into a fine inn, and order the best of dinners, never debating the
expense, which, after all, never has half the relish of those chance
country snaps, when we were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and a
precarious welcome.

"You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in