CHAPTER IV.
Mr. Jericho sat in his study; and still his dream sat astride his spirit. Much of the first distinctness of the vision had faded in the morning light; nevertheless, he could piece out sufficient from its mistiness to make him dull and dumpish. He was not a superstitious man—certainly not. He would despise himself to be troubled by a dream; and then he shifted in his seat, and took up the newspaper and laid it down again. And then he thought all dreams were to be read backwards: and thus, his vision of the Bank Cellars was to be mockingly realised by the Queen’s Bench. And then he looked about him and took heart. Pooh! dreams were playthings for conjurors and gypsies; quite beneath the thought of a reasonable, a respectable man. He had often dreamt he had been hanged, and what had come of it? Nothing; good or bad. Mr. Jericho again took up the newspaper, and was endeavouring to interest himself in the affairs of his holiness the Pope, when the door opened. He winced, for he knew the feminine turn of the handle; he winced, we say, but nevertheless manfully with the paper before his eyes tried to keep his soul apart—far away at the Court of Rome. He heard the well-known rustling of the well-known skirts, and shivered just a little at the sound. Three or four of the softest footsteps told distinctly on the silence; and then—he knew it, though he saw it not—Mrs. Jericho in her morning muslin, subsided upon the opposite chair like a summer wave.
Mr. Jericho, almost without knowing it, had shifted himself to the Tyrol, and was trying to wonder at the next move of the Emperor of Austria, when Mrs. Jericho slightly coughed. Upon this, Jericho, a little agitated, found himself among the list of bankrupts; then he took flight to the House of Commons; where he became intensely absorbed by the Sugar Question, in which he would have been happy to be busied all the morning, when the wife of his bosom observed,—
“Mr. Jericho”——
“My dear, just now it is impossible,” said Jericho, shifting.
“What is impossible, Mr. Jericho?” asked the lady, with cold wonder.
“Why, just now—I—I cannot let you have any money,” said Jericho; and he wiped his brow.
“Did I ask for money, Mr. Jericho?” inquired the wife, wounded by the imputation.
“Eh! Why—humph! Didn’t you?” cried Jericho, somewhat incredulous.