"I leave," said the testator (who I have before said was a bit of a
satirist,) "my share of the bank, and the whole or my fortune, legacies
excepted, to"--(here Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy wiped his beautiful eyes with
a cambric handkerchief, exquisitely _brode_) "my natural son, John
Spriggs, an industrious, pains-taking youth, who will do credit to the
bank. I did once intend to have made my nephew Ferdinand my heir; but so
curling a head can have no talent for accounts. I want my successor to
be a man of business, not beauty; and Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy is a great
deal too handsome for a banker; his good looks will, no doubt, win him
any heiress in town. Meanwhile, I leave him, to buy a dressing-case, a
thousand pounds."

"A thousand devils!" said Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy, banging out of the
room. He flew to his mistress. She was not at home. "Lies," says the
Italian proverb, "have short legs;" but truths, if they are unpleasant,
have terrible long ones! The next day Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy received a
most obliging note of dismissal.

"I wish you every happiness," said Miss Helen Convolvulus, in
conclusion--"but my friends are right; you are much too handsome for a
husband!"

And the week after, Miss Helen Convolvulus became Lady Rufus Pumilion.

"Alas! sir," said the bailiff, as a day or two after the dissolution of
parliament, he was jogging along with Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy, in a
hackney coach bound to the King's Bench,--"Alas! sir, what a pity it is
to take so handsome a gentleman to prison!"