Customers soon got into a way of asking to see Miss Gibson, especially when they were accompanied by husbands or brothers or male friends; and Miss Gibson soon found she sold better than any shopman, and became one of the notables in the quarter. All Mr. Gibson's fun came back, and he was as proud of his daughter as if she'd been proposed to by an earl. But Mrs. Gibson couldn't help shedding tears over Leah's loss of caste--Leah, on whose beauty and good breeding she had founded such hopes; it is but fair to add that she was most anxious to keep the books herself, so that her daughter might be spared this degradation; for no "gentleman," she felt sure, would ever propose to her daughter now. But she was mistaken. One night Barty and I dined at a little cagmag he used to frequent, where he fared well--so he said--for a shilling, which included a glass of stout. It was a disgusting little place, but he liked it, and therefore so did I. Then we called for Mrs. Gibson and Leah, and took them to the Princess's to see Fechter in Ruy Blas, and escorted them home, and had supper with them, a very good supper--nothing ever interfered with the luxuriously hospitable instincts of the Gibsons--and a very merry one. Barty imitated Fechter to the life. "I 'av ze garrb of a _lacquais_--you 'av ze sôle of _wawn_!" This he said to Mr. Gibson, who was in fits of delight. Mr. Gibson had just come home from his club, and the cards had been propitious; Leah was more reserved than usual, and didn't laugh at Barty, for a wonder, but gazed at him with love in her eyes. When we left them, Barty took my arm and walked home with me, down Oxford Street and up Southampton Row, and talked of Ruy Blas and Fechter, whom he had often seen in Paris. Just where a little footway leads from the Row to Queen Square and Great Ormond Street, he stopped and said: "Bob, do you remember how we tossed up for Leah Gibson at this very spot?" "I should think I did," said I. "Well, you had a fair field and no favor, old boy, didn't you?" "Oh yes, I've long resigned any pretensions, as I wrote you more than a year ago; you may go in and win--si le coeur t'en dit!" "Well, then, your congratulations, please. I asked her to marry me as we crossed Regent Circus, Oxford Street, on the way home; a hansom came by and scattered and splashed us. Then we came together again, and just opposite Peter Robinson's, she asked me if my mind was quite made up--if I was sure I wouldn't ever change. I swore by the eternal gods, and she said she would be my wife; so there we are, an engaged couple." I must ask the reader to believe that I was equal to the occasion, and said what I ought to have said. * * * * *