"I think you will, after that nice gruel!" said Mary, throwing her arms round his neck, and tenderly kissing his cheek. "And a guinea in it to give it a relish, too!" returned the father, with a faint smile and an expression of archness, betokening an inner nature very different from the exterior which sorrow and poverty had encrusted on it. His daughter then proposed that he should go to bed; and having assisted him to undress, and arranged her little household matters, she retired behind a tattered, drab-colored curtain which shaded her own mattress, and laid herself down to rest. The apartment in which this little scene occurred, was in the attic story of a mean house, situated in one of the narrow courts or alleys betwixt the Strand and Drury-lane. The furniture it contained was of the poorest description; the cracked window-panes were coated with dust; and the scanty fire in the grate, although the evening was cold enough to make a large one desirable--all combined to testify to the poverty of the inhabitants. It was a sorry retreat for declining years and sickness, and a sad and cheerless home for the fresh cheek and glad hopes of youth; and all the worse, that neither father nor daughter was "to the manner born;" for poor John Glegg had, as he said, had plenty of guineas in his time; at least, what should have been plenty, had they been wisely husbanded. But John, to describe the thing as he saw it himself, had always "had luck against him." It did not signify what he undertook, his undertakings invariably turned out ill.