Square. It was under the roof of that respectable old lady that
John Perkins, Esquire, being invited to take tea, wooed and won Miss
Gorgon.

Having thus described the circumstances of Miss Gorgon's life, let
us pass for a moment from that young lady, and lift up the veil of
mystery which envelopes the deeds and character of Perkins.

Perkins, too, was an orphan; and he and his Lucy, of summer
evenings, when Sol descending lingered fondly yet about the minarets
of the Foundling, and gilded the grassplots of Mecklenburgh
Square--Perkins, I say, and Lucy would often sit together in the
summer-house of that pleasure-ground, and muse upon the strange
coincidences of their life. Lucy was motherless and fatherless; so
too was Perkins. If Perkins was brotherless and sisterless, was not
Lucy likewise an only child? Perkins was twenty-three: his age and
Lucy's united, amounted to forty-six; and it was to be remarked, as
a fact still more extraordinary, that while Lucy's relatives were
AUNTS, John's were UNCLES. Mysterious spirit of love! let us treat
thee with respect and whisper not too many of thy secrets. The fact
is, John and Lucy were a pair of fools (as every young couple OUGHT
to be who have hearts that are worth a farthing), and were ready to
find coincidences, sympathies, hidden gushes of feeling, mystic
unions of the soul, and what not, in every single circumstance that
occurred from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, and
in the intervals. Bedford Row, where Perkins lived, is not very far
from Mecklenburgh Square; and John used to say that he felt a
comfort that his house and Lucy's were served by the same
muffin-man.