CHAPTER I.
OF THE LOVES OF MR. PERKINS AND MISS GORGON, AND
OF THE TWO GREAT FACTIONS IN THE TOWN OF
OLDBOROUGH.
"My dear John," cried Lucy, with a very wise look indeed, "it must and
shall be so. As for Doughty Street, with our means, a house is out of the
question. We must keep three servants, and Aunt Biggs says the taxes are
one-and-twenty pounds a year."
"I have seen a sweet place at Chelsea," remarked John: "Paradise
Row, No. 17,--garden--greenhouse--fifty pounds a year--omnibus to town
within a mile."
"What! that I may be left alone all day, and you spend a fortune in
driving backward and forward in those horrid breakneck cabs? My
darling, I should die there--die of fright, I know I should. Did you not
say yourself that the road was not as yet lighted, and that the place
swarmed with public-houses and dreadful tipsy Irish bricklayers? Would
you kill me, John?"
"My da-arling," said John, with tremendous fondness, clutching Miss
Lucy suddenly round the waist, and rapping the hand of that young person
violently against his waistcoat,--"My da-arling, don\'t say such things, even
in a joke. If I objected to the chambers, it is only because you, my love,
with your birth and connections, ought to have a house of your own. The
chambers are quite large enough and certainly quite good enough for me."
And so, after some more sweet parley on the part of these young people, it
was agreed that they should take up their abode, when married, in a part of
the House number One hundred and something, Bedford Row.