company: I did not find myself the worse in circumstances for
this lodging; but I did not find I grew richer, and we had no money to lay
by.

We soon found out that a lodging so near town was smothered with dust, and
smelt too much of London air, therefore I took a small house we had seen
about five miles from town, near an acquaintance we had made, and thought
it imprudent to sleep from home every night, and that it would be better
for my business to be in town all the week, and go to this house on
Saturday, and continue there until Monday; but one excuse or other often
found me there on Tuesday. Coach-hire backward and forwards, and carriage
of parcels, generally cost us seven or eight shillings a week; and as a
one-horse chaise would be attended with very little more expense, and
removing to a further distance, seeing the expense would be saved by not
having our house full of company on Sunday, which was always the case,
being so near town; besides the exercise would be beneficial, for I was
growing corpulent with good living and idleness. Accordingly we removed
to the distance of fifteen miles from town, into a better house, because
there was a large garden adjoining it, and a field for the horse. It
afforded abundance of fruit, and fruit was good for scorbutic and
plethoric habits, our table would be furnished at less expense, and
fifteen miles was but an hour's ride more than seven miles.

All this was plausible, and I soon found myself under the necessity of
keeping a gardener; so that every cabbage that I before put on my table
for one _penny_ cost me one _shilling_, and I bought my dessert at the
dearest hand; but I was in it--I found myself happy--in a profusion of
fruit, and a blight was little less than death to me.

This new acquired want, now introduced all the expensive modes of having
fruit in spite of either blasts or blights. I built myself a small hot
house, and it was only the addition of a chaldron or two of coals; the
gardener was the same, and we had the pride of putting on our table a
pine-apple occasionally, when our acquaintance were contented with the
exhibition of a melon.

From this expense we soon got into a fresh one. As we often out-staid
Monday in the country, it was thought prudent that I should go to town on
Monday by myself, and return in the evening; this being too much for one
horse, a second-hand chariot might be purchased for a little more than
what the one-horse chaise would s