CHAPTER XXXIII. "Qu'une femme est à plaindre lorsqu' elle aime." Two hours and a half elapsed before Mr. Jobb's return. He had taken the opportu nity of making his rounds himself; and the man of few words had boasted, to each languid and fretful patient, of the preference shewn him, and the trust reposed in him, by the rich Mr. Lindsay, of St. James's Square! An account of the duel figured in every evening paper, and the adroit extracter of the ball went forth, after the operation, like Lord Byron, after the publication of "Childe Harold," to find himself famous. Strange tide in the affairs of men!-if the sources of mighty rivers are obscure and mean, what are often the causes of what little mortals consider great events! The little Benoni pricked old Grunter's leg with a pin, and the result was that Mr. Jobb's name was blazoned all over London as the most successful of operators. The duel was soon the theme of all the gossips, from one end of England to another. The fashionable fame of the handsome Lindsay-the beauty and popularity of the prima donna, to a quarrel about whom the meeting was ascribed the mysterious interest attached to the case all rendered every one personally concerned an object of intense interest. Never had Mr. Jobb's list been so fullold ladies revived forgotten complaints as an excuse for calling him in: even Mr. Brown (for he, too, attended the wounded hero) was in high request, and received sundry glasses of cape madeira, and pieces of cake. Curiosity and newspapers not being confined to the rich, on gratis days Mr. Jobb's surgery was thronged; his poor patients valued his advice tenfold, since they had read his name in the thumbed, smoky, and greasy paper each had perused in a gin-palace, or obscure alehouse. Mrs. Jobb found herself suddenly the wife of a lion; and, by a few judicious hints, winks, and nods, fast becoming a lioness herself! Never had she felt so fond of, so proud of, Mr. Jobb-no, not on his wedding-day; when, in all the pride of his blue coat with gilt buttons, white waistcoat, white neckcloth, and cornelian brooch, he drove her in his new gig from her father's drug-repository at Wandsworth, and installed her queen of his little back-parlour in Great Quebec Street. When her delighted eyes wandered from the dark retreat to the huge and many-coloured bottles, which gave dignity to his front windows-no, not even on that happy day had she considered him the superior being he now seemed to her. Then her thoughts were divided between his charms and her own; the glass plate, on which appeared, in large gilt letters, "Cup ping, bleeding, and teeth extracted," was dazzling - nay, fascinating-present ornament and future profit happily blended; the glass counter-cases glittered with gay lozenge-boxes, with neat gilded pill-boxes, with tasteful pots of Jobb's Patent Ambrosial Dentifrice, and with all that was curious and bewitching in that line. But in the little gaudily-framed glass over the back-parlour mantelpiece, Mrs. Jobb could there see the bright eyes, smooth curls, and cherry cheeks of a bride of nineteen, the cap full of orange-blossoms, and the smile full of witchery for the enamoured Jobb, who only laughed while she revelled in all the neatlypacked boxes of lozenges, jujubes, and other dainties, which she playfully pilfered from the counter. No, the bridegroom's was a divided reign -what bridegroom's reign is not divided?between vanity and love. She read his longprinted puffs of his own "Golden Pills," his own "Ambrosial Dentifrices," his own "Pectoral Lozenges;" and, with a pretty pout, reminded him that "self-praise was no praise," for at that time she was full of plans, imbibed from her "mamma," to assert her own superiority -to get and keep the upper handnever to appear to admire him - always to underrate his talents, and overrate her own. The Now eighteen years had passed: the blooming sylph was become the fat, yet care-worn, dowdy the mother of ten children. taste for medical dainties was gone for everall traces of beauty early anxiety had prematurely destroyed. The superior intellect (sure in the long-run to govern) had obtained the mastery, and Jobb had the reins in his own hand. Sometimes (but it is so in all households) he, by lightening them too much, lost them for a while; but, in general, he was undisputed master. But now, on the morning of the duel, did Mrs. Jobb welcome and embrace her lord with unmixed delight -now was she undiverted from her pride in him by any glory in herself -now did she read his praises, not in his own puffs, but in the printed newspaper—and now she begged him to let her go his rounds with |