Page:Life of Colonel Jack (1810).djvu/38

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22
THE LIFE OF

beef-broth into the bargain; and, which cheered my heart wonderfully, all the while we were at dinner, the maid and the boy in the house every time they passed by the open box where we sat at our dinner, would look in, and cry. Gentlemen, do you call? and. Do ye call, gentlemen? I say this was as good to me as all my dinner.

Not the best house-keeper in Stepney parish, not my lord-mayor of London, no, not the greatest man on earth could be more happy in their own imagination, and with less mixture of grief or reflection, than I was at this new piece of felicity; though mine was but a small part of it, for major Jack had an estate compared to me, as I had an estate compared to what I had before: in a word, nothing but an utter ignorance of greater felicity, which was my case, could make any body think himself so exalted as I did, though I had no share of this booty but 18d.

That night the major and I triumph'd in our new enjoyment, and slept with an undisturbed repose in the usual place, surrounded with the warmth of the glass-house fires above, which was a full amends for all the ashes and cinders which we rolled in below.

Those who know the position of the glass-houses,