I could not help now saying to my dear wife, "See, my love, we have been gentlefolks for exactly a year, and a pretty life we have had of it. In the first place, my darling, we gave grand dinners, and everybody laughed at us." "Yes, and recollect how ill they made you," cries my daughter. "Then you must make a country gentleman of me." "And send pa into dunghills," roared Tug. "Then you must go to operas, and pick up foreign Barons and Counts." "O, thank heaven! dearest papa, that we are rid of them," cries my little Jemimarann, looking almost happy, and kissing her old pappy. "And you must make a fine gentleman of Tug, and send him to a fine school." "And I give you my word," says Tug, "I'm as ignorant a chap as ever lived." "You're an insolent saucebox," says Jemmy; "you've learned that at your fine school." "I've learned something else, too, ma'am; ask the boys if I haven't," grumbles Tug. "You hawk your daughter about, and just escape marrying her to a swindler." "And drive off poor Orlando," whimpered my girl. "Silence, Miss," says Jemmy, fiercely. "You insult the man whose father's property you inherited, and bring me into this prison, without hope of leaving it; for he never can help us after all your bad language." I said all this very smartly; for the fact is, my blood was up at the time, and I determined to rate my dear girl soundly. "Oh! Sammy," said she, sobbing (for the poor thing's spirit was quite broken), "it's all true; I've been very, very foolish and vain, and I've punished my dear husband and children by my follies, and I do so, so repent them!" Here, Jemimarann at once burst out crying, and flung herself into her mamma's arms, and the pair roared and sobbed for ten minutes together; even Tug looked queer: and as for me, it's a most extraordinary thing, but I'm blest if seeing them so miserable didn't make me quite happy. I don't think for the whole twelve months of our good fortune I had ever felt so gay as in that dismal room in the Fleet where I was locked up.