Warrington will be my right hand, and write it up to a respectable
sale. I will introduce you to Mr. Finucane, the sub-editor, and I know
who, in the end, will be Mrs. Finucane--a very nice, gentle creature,
who has lived sweetly through a sad life--and we will jog on, I say,
and look out for better times, and earn our living decently. You shall
have the opera-boxes, and superintend the fashionable intelligence,
and break your little heart in the poet's corner. Shall we live over
the offices?--there are four very good rooms, a kitchen, and a garret
for Laura, in Catherine-street, in the Strand; or would you like a
house in the Waterloo-road?--it would be very pleasant, only there is
that halfpenny toll at the bridge. The boys may go to King's College,
mayn't they? Does all this read to you like a joke?
"Ah, dear Blanche, it is no joke, and I am sober and telling the
truth. Our fine day-dreams are gone. Our carriage has whirled out of
sight like Cinderella's: our house in Belgravia has been whisked away
into the air by a malevolent Genius, and I am no more a member of
Parliament than I am a Bishop on his bench in the House of Lords, or a
Duke with a garter at his knee.
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