I have too often wearied you with our domestic differences to make any addition to such recitals pleasant to either of us. You know us both thoroughly, besides, and can have no difficulty in filling up the debate which ensued. Enough that I say Mrs. D. was more than usually herself. She was grandly eloquent on the prospect of the great alliance; contemptuously indifferent about the petty sacrifice it was to cost us; caustically criticised the narrow-mindedness by which I measured such grandeur; winding up all with the stereotyped comparison between Dodds and M'Carthys, with which she usually concludes an engagement, just as they play "God save the Queen" at Vauxhall to show that the fireworks are over. "And now," said I, "that we have got over preliminaries, when is this marriage to come off?" "Ask the Pope when he'll sign the Bull," said she, tartly. "Do you know," said I, "I think the 'Bull is a mistake'?" but she did n't take the joke, and I went on. "After that, what delays are there?" "I suppose the settlement will take some time. You 'll have to make suitable provision for James, to give him a handsome allowance out of the estate." "Egad, Mrs. D.," said I, "it must be _out_ of it with a vengeance, for there's no man living will advance five hundred _upon_ it." "And who wants them?" said she, angrily. "You know what I mean, well enough!" "Upon my conscience, ma'am, I do not," said I. "You must just take pity on my stupidity and enlighten me." "Isn't it clear, Mr. D.," said she, "that when marrying a woman with a large fortune he ought to have something himself?" "It would be better he had; no doubt of it!" "And if he has n't? if what should have come to him was squandered and made away with by a life of--No matter, I'll restrain my feelings." "Don't, then," said I, "for I find that _mine_ would like a little expansion." It took her five minutes, and a hard struggle besides, before she could resume. She had, so to say, "taken off the gloves," Tom, and it went hard with her not to have a few "rounds" for her pains. By degrees, however, she calmed down to explain that by a settlement on James she never contemplated actual value, but an inconvertible medium, a mere parchmentary figment to represent lands and tenements,--just, in fact, what we had done before, and with such memorable success, in Mary Anne's case. "No," said I, aloud, and at once,--"no more of that humbug! You got me into that mess before I knew where I was. You involved me in such a maze of embarrassments that I was glad to take any, even a bad road, to get away from them. But you 'll not catch me in the same scrape again; and rather than deliberately sit down to sign, seal, and deliver myself a swindler, James must die a bachelor, that's all!" If I had told her, Tom, that I was going into holy orders, and intended to be Bishop of Madagascar, she could not have stared at me with more surprise.