184 THE WIFE OF THOMA.S CARLYLE. order, attended to the taxes, and arranged the terms on which they leased their home. With regard to the lease, she writes to her husband at Llandough, during a period when he had escaped, into the country, leaving her to reign alone in a house where " the stairs were all flowing with whitewash," and a young man was scraping the walls with pumice-stone to the tune of " Oh, rest thee my darling, Thy sire is a Knight." " It will be a clean, pretty house for you to come home to, and should you find that I have exceeded by a few pounds your modest allowance for painting and papering, you will find that I have not been thoughtless neverthe- less, when I show you a document from Mr. Morgan, promising to ' indemnify us for the same in the undis- turbed possession of our house for five years ! ' A piece of paper equivalent to a lease of the house for five years, ' with the reciprocity all on one side,' binding him and leaving us free. . . . This was one of those remarkable instances of fascination which I exercise over gentlemen of a ' certain age ; ' before I had spoken six words to him it was plain to the meanest capacity that he had fallen over head and ears in love with me ; and if he put off time in writing me the promise I required, it was plainly only because he could not bear the idea of my going away again! No wonder! probably no such beatific vision as that of a real live woman, in a silk bonnet and muslin gown, ever irradiated that dingy, dusty law chamber of his, and sat there on a three-feet-high stool, since he had held a pen behind his ear ; and certainly never before had either man or woman, in that place, addressed him as a human being, not as a lawyer, or he would not have looked at me so struck dumb with admiration when I did so. For respectability's sake, I said, in taking leave, that ' my husband was out of town, or he would have come himself.' ' Better as it is," said the old gentleman ; ' do you think I
