ncy that you are far too prudent in fearing for the
future: however, if you will not admit this, let me take you on your own
ground, the present; perhaps Mr. Clements may not possess quite as much
as I could wish him, but then surely, dear Thomas, our daughter must
have more than--"

I object to seeing oaths in print; unless it must be once in a way, as a
needful point of character: probably the reader's sagacity will supply
many omissions of mine in the eloquence of Sir Thomas Dillaway and
others. But his calm spouse, nothing daunted, quietly whispered on--"You
know, Thomas, you have boasted to me that your capital is doubling every
year; penny-postage has made the stationery business most prosperous;
and if you were wealthy when the old king knighted you as lord mayor,
surely you can spare something handsome now for an only daughter, who--"

"Ma'am!" almost barked the affectionate father, "if Maria marries money,
she shall have money, and plenty of it, good girl; but if she will
persist in wedding a beggar, she may starve, mum, starve, and all her
poverty-stricken brats too, for any pickings they shall get out of my
pocket. Ey? what? you pretend to read your Bible, mum--don't you know
we're commanded to 'give to him that hath, and to take away from him
that--'"

"For shame, Sir Thomas Dillaway!" interrupted the wife, as well she
might, for all her quietude: she was a good sort of woman, and her
better nature aroused its wrath at this vicious application of a truth
so just when applied to morals and graces, so bitterly iniquitous in the
case of this world's wealth. I wish that our ex-lord mayor's distorted
text may not be one of real and common usage. So, silencing her lord,
whose character it was to be overbearing to the meek, but cringing to
any thing like rebuke or opposition, she forthwith pushed her
advantages, adding--

"Your income is now four thousand a-year, as you have told me, Thomas,
every hour of every day, since your last lucky hit in the government
contract for blue-elephants and whitey-browns. We have only John and
Maria; and John gets enough out of his own stock-brokering business to
keep his curricle and belong to clubs--and--alas! my fears are many for
my poor dear boy--I often wish, Thomas, that our John was not so well
supplied with money: whereas, poor Maria--"

"Tush, ma'am, you're a fool, and have no respect at all for monied men.
Jack's a rich man, mum--knows a trick or two, sticks at noth