“Or a pretty woman,” says that Botts (he _will_ have his joke). “Batchelor, my elderly Tiresias, are you turned into a lovely young lady _par hasard_?” “Get along, you absurd Trumperian professor!” say I. But the circumstance was the talk not only in Compotation Room that evening over our wine, but of the whole college. And further, events happened which made each man look at his neighbour with wonder. For that whole term Sargent did not ask our nobleman Lord Sackville (Lord Wigmore’s son) to the lodge. (Lord W.’s father, you know, Duff, was baker to the college.) For that whole term he was rude but twice to Perks, the junior tutor, and then only in a very mild way: and what is more, he gave his niece a present of a gown, of his blessing, of a kiss, and a high character, when she went down;--and promised to put one of her young brothers to school--which promise, I need not say, he faithfully kept: for he has good principles, Sargent has. He is rude: he is ill-bred: he is _bumptious_ beyond almost any man I ever knew: he is spoiled not a little by prosperity;--but he is magnanimous: he can own that he has been in the wrong; and oh me! what a quantity of Greek he knows! Although my late friend the captain never seemed to do aught but spend the family money, his disreputable presence somehow acted for good in the household. “My dear husband kept our family together,” Mrs. Prior said, shaking her lean head under her meagre widow’s cap. “Heaven knows how I shall provide for these lambs now he is gone.” Indeed, it was not until after the death of that tipsy shepherd that the wolves of the law came down upon the lambs--myself included, who have passed the age of lambhood and mint sauce a long time. They came down upon our fold in Beak Street, I say, and ravaged it. What was I to do? Could I leave that widow and children in their distress? I was not ignorant of misfortune, and knew how to succour the miserable. Nay, I think, the little excitement attendant upon the seizure of my goods, &c., the insolent vulgarity of the low persons in possession--with one of whom I was very near coming to a personal encounter--and other incidents which occurred in the bereft household, served to rouse me, and dissipate some of the languor and misery under which I was suffering, in consequence of Miss Mulligan’s conduct to me. I know I took the late captain to his final abode. My good friends the printers of the _Museum_ took one of his boys into their counting-house. A blue coat and a pair of yellow stockings were procured for Augustus; and seeing the Master’s children walking about in Boniface gardens with a glum-looking old wretch of a nurse, I bethought me of proposing to him to take his niece Miss Prior--and, heaven be good to me! never said one word to her uncle about Miss Bellenden and the Academy. I daresay I drew a number of long bows about her. I managed about the bad grammar pretty well, by lamenting that Elizabeth’s poor mother had