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Charles Porkington, M.A., sometime fellow of St. Swithin, was born of humble parents. He was educated, with a due regard for economy, in the mathematics by his father, and in the prevailing theology of the district by his mother. The village schoolmaster had also assisted in the completion of his education by teaching him a little bad Latin. He was ultimately sent to college, his parents inferring that he would make a success of the study of books, because he had always shown a singular inaptitude for anything else. At college he had read hard.

The common sights and sounds of University life had been unheeded by him. They passed before his eyes, and they entered into his ears, but his mind refused to receive any impression from them. After taking a high degree, and being elected a fellow, he had written a novel of a strongly melodramatic cast, describing college life, and showing such an intimate acquaintance with the obscurer parts of it, that a great many ladies declared that "they always thought so;-it was just as they supposed." The novel, however, did not meet with much success, and he then turned to the more lucrative but far less noble occupation of "coaching." He could not be said to be absolutely unintellectual. As he had not profited by the experience of life, so he had not been contaminated by it. He was moral, chiefly in a negative sense, and was not inclined to irreligion. The faith of his parents sat, perhaps, uncomfortably upon him; and he had not sufficient strength of mind to adopt a new pattern. He was in short an amiable mathematician, and a feeble classic; and I think that is all that could be said of him with any certainty. There seemed to be an absence of character which might be called characteristic, and a feebleness of will so absolute as to disarm contempt.

A portion of Porkington's hard earned gains was transmitted regularly to his two aged parents, while he himself, partly from habit and partly from indifference, lived as frugally as possible.

"Bless me!" cried Mrs. Porkington, within six months of her marriage, "To think that you should have squandered such large sums of money upon people who seem to have got on very well without them."

"My dear," replied he, "they are very poor, and in want of many comforts."

"Of course I am sorry they cannot have them now," retorted she, "and it is therefore a pity they ever should have had them."

Porkington sighed slightly, but had already learned not to contend, if he could remember not to do so. Mrs. Porkington was of large stature and majestic carriage; and had moreover a voice sufficiently powerful to keep order in an Irish brigade, or to command a vessel in a storm without the assistance of a trumpet. Mr. Porkington, on the other hand, was a little, dry, pale, plain man, with an abstracted and nervous manner, and a voice that had never grown up so as to match even the little body from which it came, but was a sort of cracked treble whisper. Moreover, when Mrs. Porkington wished to speak her mind to her husband, she would recline upon a sofa in an impressive manner, and fix her eyes upon the ceiling. Mr. Porkington, on these occasions, would sit on the very edge of the most uncomfortable chair, his toes turned out, his hands embracing his knees, and his eyes tracing the patterns upon the carpet, as though with a view of studying some abstruse theory of curves. On which side the victory lay under these circumstances it is easy to guess.

Mrs. Porkington felt the advantage of her position and followed it up.

"I never, my dear, mention any subject to you, but you immediately fling your parents at me."

Mr. Porkington would as soon have thought of throwing St. Paul's Cathedral.

After a honeymoon spent in the Lake district the happy pair went to pay a visit to the parents of the bridegroom, and Porkington had so brightened and revived during his stay there, and had expressed himself so happy in their society, that Mrs. Porkington could not forgive him. In the company of his wife's father, on the contrary, he relapsed into a state bordering upon coma; and no wonder, for that worthy retired tallow merchant was a perfect specimen of ponderous pomposity, and had absolutely nothing in common with the shy scholar who had become his son-in-law. Mr. Candlish had lost the great part of the money he had made by tallow, and by consequence had nothing to give his daughter; but she behaved herself as a woman should whose father might at one time have given her ten thousand pounds. "My papa, my dear, was worth at least ￡40,000 when he retired," was the form in which Mrs. Porkington flung her surviving parent at the head of her husband, and crushed him flat with the missile. To the world at large she spoke of her father as "being at present a gentleman of moderate means." Now, as a gentleman of moderate means cannot be expected to provide for a sister of no means at all; and as Mrs. Porkington, not having been blessed with children by her marriage, required a companion, her aunt tacked herself on to Mr. Porkington's establishment, and became a permanent and substantial fixture. Fat, ugly, and spiteful when she dared, she became a thorn in the side of the poor tutor, and supported on all occasions the whims and squabbles of her niece. Whenever the "coach" evinced any tendency to travel too fast, Mrs. Porkington put the "drag" on, and the vehicle stopped.