brilliant light blue parasol. Mrs. Shandon was in an old black watered silk; her bonnet had never seen very brilliant days of prosperity any more than its owner, but she could not help looking like a lady whatever her attire was. The two women curtsied to each other, each according to her fashion.

"I hope you're pretty well, Mum?" said Mrs. Bungay.

"It's a very fine day," said Mrs. Shandon.

"Won't you step in, Mum?" said Mrs. Bungay, looking so hard at the child as almost to frighten her.

"I-I came about business with Mr. Bungay-I-I hope he's pretty well?" said timid Mrs. Shandon.

"If you go to see him in the counting-house, couldn't you-couldn't you leave your little gurl with me?" said Mrs. Bungay, in a deep voice, and with a tragic look, as she held out one finger towards the child.

"I want to stay with mamma,” cried little Mary, burying her face in her mother's dress.

"Go with this lady, Mary, my dear," said the mother.

"I'll show you some pretty pictures," said Mrs. Bungay, with the voice of an ogress, "and some nice things besides; look here”—and opening her brown paper parcel, Mrs. Bungay displayed some choice sweet biscuits, such as her Bungay loved after his wine. Little Mary followed after this attraction, the whole party entering at the private entrance, from which a side door led into Mr. Burgay's commercial apartments. Here, however, as the child was about to part from her mother, her courage again failed her, and again she ran to the maternal petticoat; upon which the kind and gentle Mrs. Shandon, seeing the look of disappointment in Mrs. Bungay's face, good-naturedly said, "If you will let me, I will come up too, and sit for a few minutes," and so the three females ascended the stairs together. A second biscuit charmed little Mary into perfect confidence, and in a minute or two she prattled away without the least restraint.

Faithful Finucane meanwhile found Mr. Bungay in a severer mood than he had been on the night previous, when two-thirds of a bottle of port, and two large glasses of brandy and water, had warmed his soul into enthusiasm, and made him generous in his promises towards Captain Shandon. His impetuous wife had rebuked him on his return home. She had ordered that he should give no relief to the Captain ; he was a good-for-nothing fellow, whom no money would help; she disapproved of the plan of the “ Pall Mall Gazette," and expected that Bungay would only lose his money in it as they were losing over the way (she always called her brother's establishment "over the way,") by the "Whitehall Journal." Let Shandon stop in prison and do his work; it was the best place for him. In vain Finucane pleaded and promised and implored, for his friend Bungay had had an hour's lecture in the morning and was inexorable.

66

But what honest Jack failed to do below stairs in the countinghouse, the pretty faces and manners of the mother and child were effecting in the drawing-room, where they were melting the fierce but really soft Mrs. Bungay. There was an artless sweetness in Mrs.

Shandon's voice, and a winning frankness of manner, which made most people fond of her, and pity her and taking courage by the rugged kindness with which her hostess received her, the Captain's lady told her story, and described her husband's goodness and virtues, and her child's failing health (she was obliged to part with two of them, she said, and send them to school, for she could not have them in that horrid place)-that Mrs. Bungay, though as grim as Lady Macbeth, melted under the influence of the simple tale, and said she would go down and speak to Bungay. Now in this household to speak was to command, with Mrs. Bungay; and with Bungay, to hear was to obey.

It was just when poor Finucane was in despair about his negotiation, that the majestic Mrs. Bungay descended upon her spouse, politely requested Mr. Finucane to step up to his friends in her drawing-room, while she held a few minutes' conversation with Mr. B., and when the pair were alone the publisher's better half informed him of her intentions towards the Captain's lady.

"What's in the wind now, my dear?" Mæcenas asked, surprised at his wife's altered tone. "You wouldn't hear of my doing anything for the Captain this morning : I wonder what has been a changing of you."

"The Capting is an Irishman," Mrs. Bungay replied; "and those Irish I have always said I couldn't abide. But his wife is a lady, as any one can see; and a good woman, and a clergyman's daughter, and a West of England woman, B., which I am myself, by my mother's side—and, O Marmaduke, didn't you remark her little gurl ?"

66 Yes, Mrs. B. I saw the little girl."

"And didn't you see how like she was to our angel, Bessy, Mr. B. ?"—and Mrs. Bungay's thoughts flew back to a period eighteen years back, when Bacon and Bungay had just set up in business as small booksellers in a country town, and when she had had a child, named Bessy, something like the little Mary who had just moved her compassion.

'Well, well, my dear," Mr. Bungay said, seeing the little eyes of his wife begin to twinkle and grow red; "the Captain ain't in for much. There's only a hundred and thirty pound against him. Half the money will take him out of the Fleet, Finucane says, and we'll pay him half salaries till he has made the account square. When the little 'un said, 'Why don't you take Par out of pizn?' I did feel it, Flora, upon my honour I did, now." And the upshot of this conversation was, that Mr. and Mrs. Bungay both ascended to the

drawing-room, and Mr. Bungay made a heavy and clumsy speech, in which he announced to Mrs. Shandon, that, hearing sixty-five pounds would set her husband free, he was ready to advance that sum of money, deducting it from the Captain's salary, and that he would give it to her on condition that she would personally settle with the creditors regarding her husband's liberation.

I think this was the happiest day that Mrs. Shandon and Mr. Finucane had had for a long time. "Bedad, Bungay, you're a trump!" roared out Fin, in an overpowering brogue and emotion. "Give us your fist, old boy and won't we send the 'Pall Mall Gazette' up to ten thousand a-week, that's all !" and he jumped about the room, and tossed up little Mary, with a hundred frantic antics.

"If I could drive you anywhere in my carriage, Mrs. Shandon— I'm sure it's quite at your service," Mrs. Bungay said, looking out at a one-horsed vehicle which had just driven up, and in which this lady took the air considerably—and the two ladies, with little Mary between them (whose tiny hand Mæcenas's wife kept fixed in her great grasp), with the delighted Mr. Finucane on the back seat, drove away from Paternoster Row, as the owner of the vehicle threw triumphant glances at the opposite windows at Bacon's.

"It won't do the Captain any good," thought Bungay, going back to his desk and accounts, "but Mrs. B. becomes reglar upset when she thinks about her misfortune. The child would have been of age yesterday, if she'd lived. Bessy told me so :" and he wondered how women did remember things.

We are happy to say that Mrs. Shandon sped with very good success upon her errand. She who had had to mollify creditors when she had no money at all, and only tears and entreaties wherewith to soothe them, found no difficulty in making them relent by means of a bribe of ten shillings in the pound; and the next Sunday was the last, for some time at least, which the Captain spent in prison.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

A DINNER IN THE ROW.

PON the appointed day our two friends made their appearance at Mr. Bungay's door in Paternoster Row; not the public entrance through which booksellers' boys issued with their sacks full of Bungay's volumes, and around which timid aspirants lingered with their virgin manuscripts ready for sale to Sultan Bungay, but at the private door of the house, whence the splendid Mrs. Bungay would come forth to step into her chaise and take her drive, settling herself on the cushions, and casting looks of defiance at Mrs. Bacon's opposite windows-at Mrs. Bacon, who was as yet a chaiseless woman.

On such occasions, when very much wroth at her sister-in-law's splendour, Mrs. Bacon would fling up the sash of her drawing-room window, and look out with her four children at the chaise, as much as to say, "Look at these four darlings, Flora Bungay! This is why I can't drive in my carriage; you would give a coach and four to have the same reason." And it was with these arrows out of her quiver that Emma Bacon shot Flora Bungay as she sate in her chariot envious and childless.

As Pen and Warrington came to Bungay's door, a carriage and a cab drove up to Bacon's. Old Dr. Slocum descended heavily from the first; the Doctor's equipage was as ponderous as his style, but both had a fine sonorous effect upon the publishers in the Row. A couple of dazzling white waistcoats stepped out of the cab.

Warrington laughed. "You see Bacon has his dinner party too.