ker
was no more romantic than the butcher, and would, unless he was checked
every day, find means to put down a 'dead one'; and that the milkman's
chalk had got a notch in it, and would make two strokes instead of one.
In short, that there was at the bottom of this best of all possible
worlds a vast amount of sheer roguery.

The consequence of Miss Squeamish's want of a knowledge of all this was
that she soon found out the impossibility of being able to make things
come together--'to make ends meet'--as the saying is.

She floundered about in her business for a year or two, but grew poorer
and poorer, got in debt largely with her grocer, baker, and butcher, and
at last was obliged to stop for want of funds.

But it is an old proverb that 'when one door shuts another opens,' and
this was the only part of Miss Squeamish's philosophy which had ever
come true. No sooner was her shop shut up than the bills came in, and
with Mrs. Shambles' bill the copy of a writ, so that Miss Squeamish was
on the high road to a prison. But fortune sometimes favours those who
will not favour themselves, and it somehow or other happened that Miss
Squeamish pleaded so eloquently for herself and her destitute situation
with Mr. Mumbles, the very fat butcher and her principal creditor, that
he agreed to cancel his debt and pay the others on condition that Miss
Squeamish would become Mrs. Mumbles.

And Mrs. Mumbles she did become. For Mr. Mumbles was very rich, and
although in person he was not very imposing he made up in quantity for
what he wanted in quality, and the prospect of plenty of meat and a good
name to one destitute of either had such an effect on Miss Squeamish as
to put to flight all her visionary ideas of perfection--love in a
cottage and platonic affection--and she settled down, in appearance at
least, as a very spruce butcher's wife, and took to caps, aprons, and
blue ribands.

Mr. Mumbles was a thrifty man, and had been so all his life. He was
about fifty years of age, and not disposed to alter his habits, but he
required Mrs. Mumbles to alter hers. He proceeded, therefore, to give
his worthy spouse some initiatory instructions in the art of jointing a
scrag of mutton, cutting out a pluck, or chinning a whole sheep upon an
occasion. This was very different from novel reading. She had, indeed,
read of knights cleaving their adversaries from the 'chaps to the
chine,' and of 'sticking to the heart,' and sometimes fancied, as sh