"What, Dobble, my boy, don't you recollect old Stubbs, and our adventure with the butcher's daughters, ha?"
Dobble gave me a sickly kind of grin, and said, "Oh! ah! yes! It is—yes! it is, I believe, Captain Stubbs."
"An old comrade, madam, of Captain Dobble's, and one who has heard so much, and seen so much, of your ladyship, that he must take the liberty of begging his friend to introduce him."
Dobble was obliged to take the hint; and Captain Stubbs was duly presented to Mrs. Manasseh; the lady was as gracious as possible: and when, at the end of the walk, we parted, she said, "she hoped Captain Dobble would bring me to her apartments that evening, where she expected a few friends." Everybody, you see, knows everybody at Leamington; and I, for my part, was well known as a retired officer of the army; who, on his father's death, had come into seven thousand a year. Dobble's arrival had been subsequent to mine, but putting up, as he did, at the Royal Hotel, and dining at the ordinary there with the widow, he had made his acquaintance before I had. I saw, however, that if I allowed him to talk about me, as he could, I should be compelled to give up all my hopes and pleasures at Leamington; and so I determined to be short with him. As soon as the lady had gone into the hotel, my friend Dobble was for leaving me likewise; but I stopped him, and said, "Mr. Dobble, I saw what you meant just now: you wanted to cut me, because, forsooth, I did not choose to fight a duel at Portsmouth; now look you, Dobble, I am no hero, but I'm not such a coward as you—and you know it. You are a very different man to deal with from Waters; and I will fight this time."
Not, perhaps, that I would: but after the business of the butcher, I knew Dobble to be as great a coward as ever lived: and there never was any harm in threatening, for you know you are not obliged to stick to it afterwards. My words had their effect upon Dobble, who stuttered, and looked red, and then declared, he never had the slightest intention of passing me by; so we became friends, and his mouth was stopped.
He was very thick with the widow: but that lady had a very capacious heart, and there were a number of other gentlemen who seemed equally smitten with her. "Look at that Mrs. Manasseh," said a gentleman (it was droll, he was a Jew, too), sitting at dinner by me; "she is old and ugly, and yet because she has money, all the men are flinging themselves at her."
"She has money, has she?"
"Eighty thousand pounds, and twenty thousand for each of her children. I know it for a fact," said the strange gentleman. "I am in the law, and we, of our faith, you know, know pretty well what the great families amongst us are worth."
"Who was Mr. Manasseh?"
"A man of enormous wealth—a tobacco-merchant—West Indies; a fellow of no birth, however; and who, between ourselves, married a woman that is not much better than she should be. My dear sir," whispered he, "she is always in love—now it is with that Captain Dobble; last week it was somebody else; and it may be you next week, if—ha! ha! ha!—you are disposed to enter the lists."