'Your livelihood is provided for. You will receive during your three lives the sum of three guineas paid weekly.' 'Three guineas?' The younger caught my hand, 'Cousin Will! Oh! It is our living. It is everything to us poor paupers. Will, I doubt we have misjudged you.' Her sister snatched her hand away. 'Don't touch him!' she cried. 'Don't speak to him! Three guineas a week! The miserable pittance! and he has thousands--thousands--thousands a year'--her voice rose to a shriek--'which ought to have been our murdered brother's and our own!' One must never look for gratitude or even for reasonable recognition: or for the courtesy of thanks: but these words were really more shrewish and more bitter than one can endure. However, I made no reply and left them, pleased at least that one of them could be moved to confessing her prejudice. I know not what became of them, nor have I ever heard tidings of them since that day. One more addition was made to our party. My brother-in-law, Tom Shirley, came to me one morning with a serious face--serious at least, for him. 'Will,' he said, 'I have been thinking about my own concerns, that is, my wife has been thinking about them for me. It is a great advantage for a man to give over that part of his business to his wife.' 'Well, Tom?' 'She says, if I remember right, because she has been saying a good deal, that so long as I am content to play first fiddle at the Dog and Duck for thirty shillings a week it matters not, as we shall never get on, and shall have to live in the Rules all our life. Well, Will, I would as lief live in the Rules as out of them. There is very good company in the Rules, almost as good as in the King's Bench itself.' 'She is not content that you should always play the fiddle at that place, and you are. Is that so?' 'For the patronage of aristocracy and the esteem of an audience of taste there is no equal to the Dog and Duck,' he replied gravely, as if he meant what he said of the dirty disreputable haunt of 'prentices and their kind. 'But I confess, Will, that there are times when I consider my musical compositions and when I long for a wider popularity. I think that I should like an opportunity to get my name better known. At the Dog and Duck the noble audience doth not ask the name of the composer.' 'You would leave the Rules if you could, and go live at Westminster, where there are concerts and rich patrons? Well, Tom, we are now rich. We might manage that for you I believe.' He shook his head. 'No. Best not waste good money. I should only get back here again in a month or two. My dear Will, if you only knew how difficult it is to refuse when things are offered on credit. Now, in the Rules no one has any credit, so that we save all our money.' I never heard of Tom's saving any money. However, I asked him what he would have. He would go with me. But did they want music in Virginia?