Methuselah is gone to finish the night at the club. "Mind to–morrow," Miss Trotter says, kissing her hand out of the carriage. Canaillard departs, asking the way to "Lesterre Squar." They all go away—life goes away.

Look at Miss Martin and young Ward! How tenderly the rogue is wrapping her up! how kindly she looks at him! The old folks are whispering behind as they wait for their carriage. What is their talk, think you? and when shall that pair make a match? When you see those pretty little creatures with their smiles and their blushes, and their pretty ways, would you like to be the Grand Bashaw?

"Mind and send me a large piece of cake," I go up and whisper archly to old Mr. Ward: and we look on rather sentimentally at the couple, almost the last in the rooms (there, I declare, go the musicians, and the clock is at five)—when Grundsell, with an air effare, rushes up to me and says, "For e'v'n sake, sir, go into the supper–room: there's that Hirish gent a–pitchin' into Mr. P."

THE MULLIGAN AND MR. PERKINS.

It was too true. I had taken him away after supper (he ran after Miss Little's carriage, who was dying in love with him as he fancied), but the brute had come back again. The doctors of divinity were putting up their condiments: everybody was gone; but the abominable Mulligan sat swinging his legs at the lonely supper–table!

Perkins was opposite, gasping at him.

The Mulligan.—I tell ye, ye are the butler, ye big fat man. Go get me some more champagne: it's good at this house.

Mr. Perkins (with dignity).—It IS good at this house; but—

The Mulligan.—Bht hwhat, ye goggling, bow–windowed jackass? Go get the wine, and we'll dthrink it together, my old buck.

Mr. Perkins.—My name, sir, is PERKINS.

The Mulligan.—Well, that rhymes with jerkins, my man of firkins; so don't let us have any more shirkings and lurkings, Mr. Perkins.

Mr. Perkins (with apoplectic energy).—Sir, I am the master of this house; and I order you to quit it. I'll not be insulted, sir. I'll send for a policeman, sir. What do you mean, Mr. Titmarsh, sir, by bringing this—this beast into my house, sir?

At this, with a scream like that of a Hyrcanian tiger, Mulligan of the hundred battles sprang forward at his prey; but we were beforehand with him. Mr. Gregory, Mr. Grundsell, Sir Giles Bacon's large man, the young gentlemen, and myself, rushed simultaneously upon the tipsy chieftain, and confined him. The doctors of divinity looked on with perfect indifference. That Mr. Perkins did not go off in a fit is a wonder. He was led away heaving and snorting frightfully.

Somebody smashed Mulligan's hat over his eyes, and I led him forth into the silent morning. The chirrup of the birds, the freshness of the rosy air, and a penn'orth of coffee that I got for him at a stall in the Regent Circus, revived him somewhat. When I quitted him, he was not angry but sad. He was desirous, it is true, of avenging the wrongs of Erin in battle line; he wished also to share the grave of Sarsfield and Hugh O'Neill; but he was sure that Miss Perkins, as well as Miss Little, was desperately in love with him; and I left him on a doorstep in tears.

"Is it best to be laughing–mad, or crying–mad, in the world?" says I moodily, coming into my street. Betsy the maid was already up and at work, on her knees, scouring the steps, and cheerfully beginning her honest daily labor.

OUR STREET

BY MR. M. A TITMARSH.

Our street, from the little nook which I occupy in it, and whence I and a fellow–lodger and friend of mine cynically observe it, presents a strange motley scene. We are in a state of transition. We are not as yet in the town, and we have left the country, where we were when I came to lodge with Mrs. Cammysole, my excellent landlady. I then took second–floor apartments at No. 17, Waddilove Street, and since, although I have never moved (having various little comforts about me), I find myself living at No. 46A, Pocklington Gardens.

Why is this? Why am I to pay eighteen shillings instead of fifteen? I was quite as happy in Waddilove Street; but the fact is, a great portion of that venerable old district has passed away, and we are being absorbed into the splendid new white–stuccoed Doric–porticoed genteel Pocklington quarter. Sir Thomas Gibbs Pocklington, M. P. for the borough of Lathanplaster, is the founder of the district and his own fortune. The Pocklington Estate Office is in the Square, on a line with Waddil—with Pocklington Gardens I mean. The old inn, the "Ram and Magpie," where the market–gardeners used to bait, came out this year with a new white face and title, the shield, &c. of the "Pocklington Arms." Such a shield it is! Such quarterings! Howard, Cavendish, De Ros, De la Zouche, all mingled together.

Even our house, 46A, which Mrs. Cammysole has had painted white in compliment to the Gardens of which it now forms part, is a sort of impostor, and has no business to be called Gardens at all. Mr. Gibbs, Sir Thomas's agent and nephew, is furious at our daring to take the title which belongs to our betters. The very next door (No. 46, the Honorable Mrs. Mountnoddy,) is a house of five stories, shooting up proudly into the air, thirty feet above our old high–roofed low–roomed old tenement.