deceased wife, and of retiring, an estated squire-arch, to the _otium cum._, or _sine dignitate_, as the case might be, of a country life; and this disposition had of late been much quickened by daily-increasing apprehensions of negro emancipation and revolutionary interference with differential duties--changes which, in conjunction with others of similar character, would infallibly bring about that utter commercial ruin which Mr. Linden, like every other rich and about-to-retire merchant or tradesman whom I have ever known, constantly prophesied to be near at hand and inevitable. With such a gentleman the firm of Flint & Sharp had only professional interviews, when procrastinating or doubtful debtors required that he should put on the screw--a process which, I have no doubt, he would himself have confidently performed, but for the waste of valuable time which doing so would necessarily involve. Both Flint and myself were, however, privately intimate with him--Flint more especially, who had known him from boyhood--and we frequently dined with him on a Sunday at his little box at Fulham. Latterly, we had on these occasions met there a Mrs. Arnold and her daughter Catherine--an apparently amiable, and certainly very pretty and interesting young person--to whom, Mr. Linden confidentially informed us, his son Tom had been for some time engaged. "I don't know much about her family," observed Mr. Linden one day, in the course of a gossip at the office, "but she moves in very respectable society. Tom met her at the Slades'; but I _do_ know she has something like thirty-five thousand pounds in the funds. The instant I was informed how matters stood with the young folk, I, as a matter of common sense and business, asked the mother, Mrs. Arnold, for a reference to her banker or solicitor--there being no doubt that a woman and a minor would be in lawyers' leading-strings--and she referred me to Messrs. Dobson of Chancery Lane. You know the Dobsons?" "Perfectly,--what was the reply?" "That Catherine Arnold, when she came of age--it wants but a very short time of that now--would be entitled to the capital of thirty-four thousand seven hundred pounds, bequeathed by an uncle, and now lodged in the funds in the names of the trustees, Crowther & Jenkins, of Leadenhall Street, by whom the interest on that sum was regularly paid, half-yearly, through the Messrs. Dobson, for the maintenance and education of the heiress. A common-sense, business-like letter in every respect, and extremely satisfactory; and as soon as he pleases, after Catherine Arnold comes of age, and into actual possession of her fortune, Tom may have her, with my blessing over the bargain."