whole got up by a skilful mutual adaptation of garments and parts of
garments--was wonderful to all lady beholders. In cookery, they beat
the famous _chef_ who sent up five courses and a dessert, made out of
a greasy pair of jack-boots and the grass from the ramparts of the
besieged town. Their wonderful little made-dishes were mere scraps and
fragments, which in any other house would have been flung away, but
which were so artistically and scientifically handled by the young
ladies, and so tossed up, and titivated, and eked out with gravies,
and sauces, and strange devices of nondescript pasty, that Happy Jack,
feasting upon these wonderful creations of ingenuity, used to vow that
he never dined so well as when there was nothing in the house for
dinner. To their wandering, predatory life the whole family were
perfectly accustomed. A sudden turn out of quarters they cared no more
for than hardened old dragoons. They never lost pluck. One speculation
down, another came on. Sometimes the little household was united. A
bit of luck in the City or the West had been achieved, and Happy Jack
issued cards for 'At Homes,' and behaved, and looked, and spoke like
an alderman, or the member of a house of fifty years' standing. When
strangers saw his white waistcoat, and blue coat with brass buttons,
and heard him talk of a glut of gold, and money being a mere drug,
they speculated as to whether he was the governor or the vice-governor
of the Bank of England, or only the man who signs the five-pound
notes. That day six weeks, Jack had probably 'come through the court;'
a process which he always used somehow to achieve with flying colours,
behaving in such a plausible and fascinating way to the commissioner,
that that functionary regularly made a speech, in which he
congratulated Happy Jack on his candour, and evident desire to deal
fairly with his creditors, and told him he left that court without the
shadow of a stain upon his character. In the Bench, in dreary suburban
lodgings, or in the comfortable houses which they sometimes occupied,