agreeable to me. If so, it would give him great pleasure. He wished
to have a friend, who during an hour of a morning might afford him
conversation. Perhaps he might occasionally trouble him to commit a
few thoughts to writing; but that might be as it happened. If I would
come and reside in his house, and act in this friendly manner with
him, he should be gratified and I not injured.

Enoch's open eyes twinkled with joy: sparkle they could not. He
foresaw through my means, intercourse with a peer, and perhaps
patronage! He was ready to answer for me, and could not restrain his
tongue from protesting that it was a prodigiously liberal, friendly
and honourable offer.

I had not forgotten his lordship's former jolly tutor, the terms
on which they had lived, or the treatment to which this tutor had
occasionally submitted. Yet I was not displeased with the proposal. I
spurned at the idea of any such submission, but the character of his
lordship seemed changed: and changed it certainly was, though I then
knew not why, or to what. Nor was it supposed that I was to act as his
menial. I therefore expressed my sense of his lordship's civility, and
owned the situation would be acceptable to me, as I was not at present
encumbered with riches, and living in London I found was likely to
prove expensive. I had desired to have a genteel apartment, and Enoch
had told me that one had been hired for me at a guinea and a half per
week, at which I had been not a little startled. The secret of want
of wealth a very cunning man would have concealed: a very wise man,
though from other motives, would have told it with the same unaffected
simplicity that I did.

Still the transports of Enoch, at his lordship's bounty, were