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Well, after having discussed Sir George Gorgon’s letter, poor Perkins, in the utmost fury of mind that his darling should be slandered so, feeling a desire for fresh air, determined to descend to the garden and smoke a cigar in that rural quiet spot. The night was very calm. The moonbeams slept softly upon the herbage of Gray’s Inn gardens, and bathed with silver splendour Theobald’s Row. A million of little frisky twinkling stars attended their queen, who looked with bland round face upon their gambols, as they peeped in and out from the azure heavens. Along Gray’s Inn wall a lazy row of cabs stood listlessly, for who would call a cab on such a night? Meanwhile their drivers, at the alehouse near, smoked the short pipe or quaffed the foaming beer. Perhaps from Gray’s Inn Lane some broken sounds of Irish revelry might rise. Issuing perhaps from Raymond Buildings gate, six lawyers’ clerks might whoop a tipsy song–or the loud watchman yell the passing hour; but beyond this all was silence; and young Perkins, as he sat in the summerhouse at the bottom of the garden, and contemplated the peaceful heaven, felt some influences of it entering into his soul, and almost forgetting revenge, thought but of peace and love.

Presently, he was aware there was someone else pacing the garden. Who could it be?–Not Blatherwick, for he passed the Sabbath with his grandmamma at Clapham; not Scully surely, for he always went to Bethesda Chapel, and to a select prayer-meeting afterwards. Alas! it WAS Scully; for though that gentleman SAID that he went to chapel, we have it for a fact that he did not always keep his promise, and was at this moment employed in rehearsing an extempore speech, which he proposed to deliver at St. Stephen’s.

“Had I, sir,” spouted he, with folded arms, slowly pacing to and fro–“Had I, sir, entertained the smallest possible intention of addressing the House on the present occasion–hum, on the present occasion–I would have endeavoured to prepare myself in a way that should have at least shown my sense of the greatness of the subject before the House’s consideration, and the nature of the distinguished audience I have the honour to address. I am, sir, a plain man–born of the people–myself one of the people, having won, thank Heaven, an honourable fortune and position by my own honest labour; and standing here as I do–“

* * *

Here Mr. Scully (it may be said that he never made a speech without bragging about himself: and an excellent plan it is, for people cannot help believing you at last)–here, I say, Mr. Scully, who had one arm raised, felt himself suddenly tipped on the shoulder, and heard a voice saying, “Your money or your life!”

The honourable gentleman twirled round as if he had been shot; the papers on which a great part of this impromptu was written dropped from his lifted hand, and some of them were actually borne on the air into neighbouring gardens. The man was, in fact, in the direst fright.

“It’s only I,” said Perkins, with rather a forced laugh, when he saw the effect that his wit had produced.

“Only you! And pray what the dev–what right have you to–to come upon a man of my rank in that way, and disturb me in the midst of very important meditations?” asked Mr. Scully, beginning to grow fierce.

“I want your advice,” said Perkins, “on a matter of the very greatest importance to me. You know my idea of marrying?”

“Marry!” said Scully; “I thought you had given up that silly scheme. And how, pray, do you intend to live?”

“Why, my intended has a couple of hundreds a year, and my clerkship in the Tape and Sealing-Wax Office will be as much more.”

“Clerkship–Tape and Sealing-Wax Office–Government sinecure!–Why, good heavens! John Perkins, you don’t tell ME that you are going to accept any such thing?”