His residence was a red brick dwelling-house, which you would call a house by right and a cottage by courtesy: it seemed to possess, like the owner, all requisites for hospitality and kindness, and to want, like him, all pretensions to decoration and show. “This is as it should be,” I said to myself; “I shall sleep soundly beneath such a roof as this;” and so I threw up the latch of the garden-gate, and went in. Charles was in the kitchen garden behind the house, looking at his strawberry beds. I walked round to meet him. I will not describe the pleasure with which we shook hands: my readers well know what it is to meet a dear and cherished friend after a long absence. I know not which was the happier of the two. “Well,” he said, “here I am, you see, settled in a snug competency, with a dry roof over my head, and a little bit of turf around me. I have had some knowledge of Fortune’s slippery ways, and I thank my stars that I have pretty well got out of her reach. Charles Torrens can never be miserable while there’s good fishing every hour in the day in his lordship’s ponds, and good venison every Sunday in the year in his lordship’s dining-room. Here you see me settled, as it were, in my _otium cum dignitate_, without a wish beyond the welfare of my wife and the ripening of my melons; and what gives my enjoyments their greatest zest, Peregrine, is, that though the road to them was rather a hilly one, I kept out of the gutters as well as I could. What is it Horace says, Peregrine? Neque majorem feci ratione malâ rem, Nec sum facturus vitio culpâve minorem;-- that is, I did not grow rich like a rascal, and I sha’n’t grow poor like a fool; though (thanks to my uncle, the Nabob) I can afford to give a young friend a bed and a breakfast, without pinching myself and my servants the next week! But, bless me! how I am letting my tongue run on. I haven’t introduced you to Margaret yet;” and so saying, he took my arm, and hurried me into his drawing-room. His bride was a very pleasing woman--a lover might well call her a beautiful one; she seemed about one-and-twenty, and possessed every requisite to confer happiness upon a husband of my friend’s wandering habits. She had sufficient good-nature to let him wander abroad, but she had, at the same time, sufficient attractions to keep him at home; her forbearance never scolded him for his stay at another’s hearth, but her good sense always took care to make his own agreeable to him. A clever wife would have piqued him, a silly wife would have bored him: Margaret was the _aurea mediocritas_, and I could see that he was sincerely attached to her.