An argument might have ensued, if a collation, as Mr. Ludgate called it, had not appeared at this critical moment. Of what it consisted, and how genteelly and gallantly our hero did the honours of his collation, we forbear to relate; but one material circumstance we must not omit, as on this, perhaps more than even on his gentility and gallantry, depended the fortune of the day. In rummaging over a desk to find a corkscrew, young Ludgate took occasion to open and shake a pocket-book, from which fell a shower of bank notes. What effect they produced upon his fair one, and on her mother, can be best judged of by the event. Miss Belle Perkins, after this domiciliary visit, consented to go with our hero on Sunday to Kensington Gardens, Monday to Sadler’s Wells, Tuesday on the water, Wednesday to the play, Thursday the Lord knows to what ball, Friday to Vauxhall, and on Saturday to--the altar! Some people thought the young lady and gentleman rather precipitate; but these were persons who, as the bride justly observed, did not understand any thing in nature of a love match. Those who have more liberal notions, and a more extensive knowledge of the human heart, can readily comprehend how a lady may think a man so odious at one minute, that she could not touch him with a pair of tongs, and so charming the next, that she would die a thousand deaths for him, and him alone. Immediately after the ceremony was performed, Mr. and Mrs. Ludgate went down in the hoy to Margate, to spend their honeymoon in style. Their honeymoon, alas! could not be prolonged beyond the usual bounds. Even the joys of Margate could not be eternal, and the day came too soon when our happy pair were obliged to think of returning home. Home! With what different sensations different people pronounce and hear that word pronounced! Mrs. Leonard Ludgate’s home in Cranbourne-alley appeared to her, as she scrupled not to declare, an intolerable low place, after Margate. The stipulated alterations, her husband observed, had been made in the house, but none of them had been executed to her satisfaction. The expedient of the dark passage was not found to succeed: a thorough wind, from the front and back doors, ran along it when either or both were left open to admit light; and this wicked wind, not content with running along the passage, forced its way up and down stairs, made the kitchen chimney smoke, and rendered even the _more creditabler_ apartments scarcely habitable. Chimney doctors were in vain consulted: the favourite dark passage was at length abandoned, and the lady, to her utter discomfiture, was obliged to pass through the shop.