It was a sweet, voluptuous moonlight night,—so fair, so sweet, so full of that delicious languor that best accords with the human heart in its softest hours, tinging the picturesque summits of chimney-tops as well as towers, and bringing out into pleasing relief each particular brick of the classic region of the Minories,—that Richie Barter, enveloped in a double-milled dreadnought, stood before what was the mansion of the late Sir Toby Plum. Richie was the very personification of a man on 'Change,—busy, important, and imposing. He was head clerk in the house, and having served the good Sir Toby till he could serve him no longer, and having wound up the affairs of the firm, which seem disposed of, in that neatly-tied parcel under his arm, he avoids the garish eye of day, and calls by moonlight to transact a little business and condolence together. Richie was a prudent man, frugal both of his purse and person, and stood at the door of Sir Toby, elevated with the integrity of his purpose, and the consciousness of four thousand good pounds his own making. A few moments, and he was ushered into the prettiest of all parlours, where, reposing on the most seductive of ottomans, reclined the pale and disconsolate mistress of the mansion. By the softened lustre of a solitary lamp, the prudent eye of Richie took a hasty glance around him: everything bespoke comfort and elegance. He sat down, drew his chair near the sofa, and laid the neatly-tied parcel at her feet. Only one of these was visible, and was shrouded from the too curious gaze of Richie in a little slipper; the other, with retiring delicacy, was withdrawn within those precincts where the imagination of Richie did not follow. The communings of Richie on the occasion were worthy of him, and as he feasted his eyes on its fair and delicate proportions, he calculated (for he was a man of calculation) by a rule of proportions, that if one sweet foot gave such pleasure, what would two give? In truth, Richie, after trying the question by every rule of proportion that Cocker or Cupid could suggest, boldly asked himself what might the lady give, who abounded in proportion; and, as a prudent man, he thought at no remote period he might put that question.
"Still inconsolable, madam?" said Richie Barter after a few prefatory hems. "Surely you might yield to the soothing anxieties of your friends, and be reconciled to the loss—good man that he was!"
"Ah! Mr. Barter, such a loss!—so undeserved!—so unexpected!—and to be left thus a prey to——"
"We must all go in our turn, madam," interrupted the sententious Richie; "and 'tis a consolation to his successors to know that his affairs were in a most flourishing condition;—a net capital, madam, of forty thousand pounds, after all demands. You will find the exact state of his affairs in these papers."
Lady Plum petulantly kicked the parcel off the sofa.
"I hate business, Mr. Barter; and were forty times the sum" (perceiving his ignorance of the testamentary disposition of the property) "contained in them, I would trust to your skill and integrity to wind up the matter."
"These forty thousand at your command, madam," said Richie, "the bulk of Sir Toby's property, if properly husbanded——"
The mention of a sum which she knew she had not, coupled with the name of husband, who she knew had not appreciated her merits, brought two pearly drops into her eyes, which Richie would have given a quarter's salary to be permitted to kiss off, and which vied in size and lustre with those that trembled in her ears; but he did what was quite as grateful to the widow,—he summoned a little moisture into his own. This sympathetic display was not lost on the considerate lady.
"'Forty times that sum'—were not these her words?" thought Richie Barter, as, wending his way down Cheapside, he began to ponder on the widow's words, "and would entrust it all to Richie Barter! Well! that sum, and my own four thousand, would make a man of Richie Barter for life." And, brimful of the gayest and happiest anticipations, he strode on.
"Please, sir, what o'clock is it?" asked a little boy of Richie, as he stood staring at the clock of Bow Church; to which Richie, heedless of time and space, answered, "Forty thousand;" and, equally regardless of the shouts of laughter which the answer provoked, he walked on.