rticulate, but still alive, her head being cut frightfully with the
bedroom candle with which she was retiring to her apartment. "And,"
said Mr. Giles with great energy, "besides the empty carriages at that
funeral, and the parson in black, and the mutes and feathers and that,
there were hundreds and hundreds of people who wore no black, and who
weren't present; and who wept for their benefactress, I can tell you.
She had her faults, and many of 'em; but the amount of that woman's
charities are unheard of, sir--unheard of,--and they are put to the
credit side of her account up yonder.

"The old lady had a will of her own," my companion continued. "She would
try and know about everybody's business out of business hours: got
to know from the young clerks what chapels they went to, and from the
clergymen whether they attended regular; kept her sons, years after
they were grown men, as if they were boys at school--and what was the
consequence? They had a quarrel with Sir Thomas Newcome's own son, a
harum-scarum lad, who ran away, and then was sent to India; and, between
ourselves, Mr. Hobson and Mr. Brian both, the present Baronet, though
at home they were as mum as Quakers at a meeting, used to go out on the
sly, sir, and be off to the play, sir, and sowed their wild oats like
any other young men, sir, like any other young men. Law bless me, once,
as I was going away from the Haymarket, if I didn't see Mr. Hobson
coming out of the Opera, in tights and an opera-hat, sir, like 'Froggy
would wooing go,' of a Saturday-night, too, when his ma thought him safe
in bed in the City! I warrant he hadn't his opera-hat on when he went to
chapel with her ladyship the next morning--that very morning, as sure as
my name's John Giles.

"When the old lady was gone, Mr. Hobson had no need of any more
humbugging, but took his pleasure freely. Fighting, tandems,
four-in-hand, anything. He and his brother--his elder brother by a
quarter of an hour--were always very good friends; but after Mr.
Brian married, and there was only court-cards at his table, Mr. Hobson
couldn't stand it. They weren't of his suit, he said; and for some time
he said he wasn't a marrying man--quite the contrary; but we all come to
our fate, you know, and his time came as mine did. You know we married
sisters? It was thought a fine match for Polly Smith, when she married
the great Mr. Newcome; but I doubt whether my old woman at home hasn't
had the best of it, after all