together, but always brought them forth singly, and never failed to shut the wardrobe door and turn the key, between each visit to its shelves.
"The snuff-coloured suit," said Arthur Gride, surveying a threadbare coat, "Did I look well in snuff-colour? let me think."
The result of his cogitations appeared to be unfavourable, for he folded the garment once more, laid it aside, and mounted on a chair to get down another, chirping while he did so—
Young, loving, and fair,
Oh what happiness there!
The wedding is sure to be lucky.
"They always put in 'young,'" said old Arthur, "but songs are only written for the sake of rhyme, and this is a silly one that the poor country people sang when I was a little boy. Though stop—young is quite right too—it means the bride—yes. He, he, he! It means the bride. Oh dear, that's good. That's very good. And true besides—quite true!"
In the satisfaction of this discovery he went over the verse again with increased expression and a shake or two here and there, and then resumed his employment.
"The bottle green," said old Arthur; "the bottle-green was a famous suit to wear, and I bought it very cheap at a pawnbroker's, and there was—he, he, he!—a tarnished shilling in the waistcoat pocket. To think that the pawnbroker shouldn't have known there was a shilling in it! I knew it; I felt it when I was examining the quality. Oh, what a dull dog! It was a lucky suit too, this bottle-green. The very day I put it on first, old Lord Mallowford was burnt to death in his bed, and all the post-obits fell in. I'll be married in the bottle-green. Peg—Peg Sliderskew—I'll wear the bottle-green."
This call, loudly repeated twice or thrice at the room door, brought into the apartment a short, thin, weasen, blear-eyed old woman, palsy-stricken and hideously ugly, who, wiping her shrivelled face upon her dirty apron, inquired, in that subdued tone in which deaf people commonly speak:—
"Was that you a calling, or only the clock a striking? My hearing gets so bad, I never know which is which; but when I hear a noise I know it must be one of you, because nothing else ever stirs in the house."
"Me, Peg—me," said Arthur Gride, tapping himself on the breast to render the reply more intelligible.
"You, eh ?" returned Peg. "And what do you want?"
"I'll be married in the bottle-green," cried Arthur Gride.
"It's a deal too good to be married in, master," rejoined Peg, after a short inspection of the suit. "Haven't you got anything worse than this?"
"Nothing that'll do," replied old Arthur.
"Why not do?" retorted Peg. "Why don't you wear your every-day clothes like a man—eh?"
"They an't becoming enough, Peg," returned her master.
