Now, Old Nobbler had a daughter, like Shylock, and Jephthah, and Virginius, and many other doting old gentlemen. Of course he was very fond of the girl, and she did with him pretty much as she liked. Well, “’tis an old tale and often told;” it was not likely that Barbara Nobbler, in all the flush of eighteen summers, could abide constantly under the same roof with Dick Naggett, and remain insensible to his attractions. The lady was a swarthy bouncing _brunette_, cherry-lipped, bright-eyed, heavy-handed, and with a foot and ankle of the mill-post order, such as seldom belong to a good mover. Nevertheless, she was a healthy, vigorous girl, with a quick temper, and a good heart. It was natural that she should plunge at once chin-deep in love with rosy, trim, curly-headed, flaxen-haired Dick Naggett. Old Nobbler would not _hear_ of the match, shut Barbara up in her room, and turned Dick off the stool in the office, and worse than that, out of the pig-skin in the saddle-room. There was a dreadful blow-up in the house. The father had a fit of the gout; the daughter was seen dissolved in tears; and the lover, looking trimmer, rosier, and saucier than ever, was observed to take tea, two days running, with Mrs. Furbelow, the dressmaker, a widow of a certain calibre, over the way.
Flirtations, however, in all classes of life, may have been carried on so far that it is better for all parties that they should not be interrupted. Old Nobbler, a man not without legal experience, was prevailed on to listen to reason, and an early wedding was the result, which placed Mr. Naggett’s head once more above water, and indeed put him in immediate possession of a little capital, with the prospective reversion of a little more.
It was in consequence of this windfall that Mr. Naggett embarked on the very flourishing business that he had conducted for some years, at the period when I made his acquaintance,—a business that, somehow or another, led him into all sorts of places where you would have supposed there was neither time nor opportunity for the purchase and sale of meat. It conducted him to Epsom annually, at the Metropolitan Spring Meeting, and required his punctual return, for the Derby and Oaks. It released him from Ascot, probably in consequence of the hot weather, and swarms of flies prevalent in the month of June, but imperatively demanded his attendance in Yorkshire, and twice or thrice within a reasonable distance of Cambridge during the autumn months. In its prosecution he was compelled, at great personal risk and inconvenience, to take an expensive ticket by the very identical train that bore the invincible Tom Sayers down the line to battle with his gallant antagonist; and in order to do it thorough justice, he has often been detained from his own home till the small hours of the morning, and compelled to return fragrant with the combined odours of alcohol and tobacco; nor does it appear that this mysterious business can remain established on a secure basis, apart from the assistance of those agreeable stimulants.