The Argosy — page 173: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

What Our Advertisement Brought. 1§9 for they were laughing and enjoying themselves tremendously at the spectacle of this elderly gentleman piteously entreating to be released, and begging them to take the silver from a lot of hidden-away pockets. I’ve always been glad since that they did not leave the decision to Deborah and me; for he was a practised villain, you see, and might have done endless mischief elsewhere; which he cannot do now. That very night Deborah and I quite determined we would leave London at once ; and we made our plans, crying all the time from excitement, and weariness, and disappointment, and the prospect of another removal after having just got comfortably settled, and spending all our surplus money. Next evening, while I was nursing my cold, and we were both as melancholy as we could be, in came Mr. Hall and that young friend of his whom he had called Fielding. At first I was aggravated, and thought why couldn’t they have come yesterday when we had on our tabby silks and looked so comfortable ; but presently I forgot all about this. That night-adventure seemed to have made us all suddenly into old friends, and we laughed together over the burglary; and somehow —through the way Mr. Hall put it, I’m sure it was—I entirely forgot that my part (or even appearance) had been out of the common, and began to coincide with an implied sort of belief that Mr. Hall and his friend had managed it alone, and Deborah and I had only been required at the last moment to identify the ruffian. This view of the case suited me very well, and we got on most amicably to other matters. Other matters? Why, I speak of them ‘as if they were ordinary ones ; and yet—and yet here was the vea/ answer to our advertisement. Mr. Fielding was seeking a home, he told us, and had a wish to be near his friend, though he could not live in a house that had not—as he expressed it—a lady at its head. ‘“ And I do hope,” added Mr. Hall, genially, “that you will take him, Miss Lavinia. I want him near me, yet my irregular meals and hours would kill him. He has been used to the care of a mother and sister, and would miss them sorely in a bachelor’s house.” Well, before that visit was over it was all arranged, and now he lives with us ; and is, as it were, one of us. He says he never misses his mother’s care, having ours ; and perhaps it is true, for Deborah and I have grown to love him well. And besides that, no one could more thoroughly appreciate the plate he rescued; or more thoroughly enjoy a good lemon-pudding. Marx HARDCASTLFE. COMIC OOOKS. EO »