blind-hookey, Hebrew monetary transactions, and the Insolvent
Debtors' Court.

The late Mr. Sparsit, being by the mother's side a Powler, married
this lady, being by the father's side a Scadgers. Lady Scadgers
(an immensely fat old woman, with an inordinate appetite for
butcher's meat, and a mysterious leg which had now refused to get
out of bed for fourteen years) contrived the marriage, at a period
when Sparsit was just of age, and chiefly noticeable for a slender
body, weakly supported on two long slim props, and surmounted by no
head worth mentioning. He inherited a fair fortune from his uncle,
but owed it all before he came into it, and spent it twice over
immediately afterwards. Thus, when he died, at twenty-four (the
scene of his decease, Calais, and the cause, brandy), he did not
leave his widow, from whom he had been separated soon after the
honeymoon, in affluent circumstances. That bereaved lady, fifteen
years older than he, fell presently at deadly feud with her only
relative, Lady Scadgers; and, partly to spite her ladyship, and
partly to maintain herself, went out at a salary. And here she was
now, in her elderly days, with the Coriolanian style of nose and
the dense black eyebrows which had captivated Sparsit, making Mr.
Bounderby's tea as he took his breakfast.

If Bounderby had been a Conqueror, and Mrs. Sparsit a captive
Princess whom he took about as a feature in his state-processions,
he could not have made a greater flourish with her than he
habitually did. Just as it belonged to his boastfulness to
depreciate his own extraction, so it belonged to it to exalt Mrs.
Sparsit's. In the measure that he would not allow his own youth to
have been attended by a single favourable circumstance, he