So off went the happy pair--ah! how much happier was Beauty than ever so
many fine ladies one knows who have only, so to say, to rub their
wedding-rings for a banquet to rise out of the ground, with the most
distinguished guests around the table, champagne of the best, and
conversation of the worst.

Old Moser found histories of socialism profitable, more profitable
perhaps than socialism, and he actually gave five-and-sixpence for the
volume. With the ninepence already in their pockets, you will see that
they were now possessors of quite a small fortune. Six-and-threepence!
It wouldn't pay for one's lunch nowadays. Ah! but that is because the
poor alone know the art of dining.

You needn't wish to be happier and merrier than those two lovers, as
they gaily hastened to that bright and cosy corner of the town where
those lovely ham-and-beef shops make glad the faces of the passers-by. O
those hams with their honest shining faces, polished like mahogany--and
the man inside so happy all day slicing them with those wonderful long
knives (which, of course, the superior class of reader has never seen)
worn away to a veritable thread, a mere wire, but keen as Excalibur.
Beauty used to calculate in her quaint way how much steel was worn away
with each pound of ham, and how much therefore went to the sandwich. And
what an artist was the carver! What a true eye! what a firm, flexible
wrist! never a shaving of fat too much--he was too great an artist for
that. Then there were those dear little cream cheeses, and those little
brown jugs of yellow cream come all the way from Devonshire--you could
hear the cows lowing across the rich pasture, and hear the milkmaids
singing and the milk whizzing into the pail, as you looked at them.