"You have to be short, sharp, and decisive if you mean to get a girl like that to travel with you." "I should have taken the ball at the hop, Crocker; that's what I ought to have done. But I see it all now. She's as fickle as she is fair;--fickler, perhaps, if anything." "Come, Tribbledale; I ain't going to let you abuse her, you know." "I don't want to abuse her. God knows I love her too well in spite of all. It's your turn now. I can see that. There's a great many of them have had their turns." "Were there now?" asked Crocker anxiously. "There was Pollocky;--him at the Highbury Gas Works. He came after me. It was because of him she dropped me." "Was that going on for a marriage?" "Right ahead, I used to think. Pollocky is a widower with five children." "Oh Lord!" "But he's the head of all the gas, and has four hundred a year. It wasn't love as carried her on with him. I could see that. She wouldn't go and meet him anywhere about the City, as she did me. I suppose Pollocky is fifty, if he's a day." "And she dropped him also?" "Or else it was he." On receipt of this information Crocker whistled. "It was something about money," continued Tribbledale. "The old woman wouldn't part." "There is money I suppose?" "The old woman has a lot." "And isn't the niece to have it?" asked Crocker. "No doubt she will; because there never was a pair more loving. But the old lady will keep it herself as long as she is here." Then there entered an idea into Crocker's head that if he could manage to make Clara his own, he might have power enough to manage the aunt as well as the niece. They had a little more whiskey-and-water at the Angel at Islington before they got into the cab which was to take them down to the Paphian Music-Hall, and after that Tribbledale passed from the realm of partial fact to that of perfect poetry. "He would never," he said, "abandon Clara Demijohn, though he should live to an age beyond that of any known patriarch. He quite knew all that there was against him. Crocker he thought might probably prevail. He rather hoped that Crocker might prevail;--for why should not so good a fellow be made happy, seeing how utterly impossible it was that he, Daniel Tribbledale, should ever reach that perfect bliss in dreaming of which he passed his miserable existence. But as to one thing he had quite made up his mind. The day that saw Clara Demijohn a bride would most undoubtedly be the last of his existence." "Oh, no, damme; you won't," said Crocker turning round upon him in the cab.