The Great Hoggarty Diamond | Page 6

The truth is, at ten I had an
appointment under a certain person's window, who was to have been
looking at the moon at that hour, with her pretty quilled nightcap on,
and her blessed hair in papers.
There was the window shut, and not so much as a candle in it; and
though I hemmed and hawed, and whistled over the garden paling, and

sang a song of which Somebody was very fond, and even threw a
pebble at the window, which hit it exactly at the opening of the
lattice,--I woke no one except a great brute of a house-dog, that yelled,
and howled, and bounced so at me over the rails, that I thought every
moment he would have had my nose between his teeth.
So I was obliged to go off as quickly as might be; and the next morning
Mamma and my sisters made breakfast for me at four, and at five came
the "True Blue" light six-inside post-coach to London, and I got up on
the roof without having seen Mary Smith.
As we passed the house, it DID seem as if the window curtain in her
room was drawn aside just a little bit. Certainly the window was open,
and it had been shut the night before: but away went the coach; and the
village, cottage, and the churchyard, and Hicks's hayricks were soon
out of sight.
* * *
"My hi, what a pin!" said a stable-boy, who was smoking a cigar, to the
guard, looking at me and putting his finger to his nose.
The fact is, that I had never undressed since my aunt's party; and being
uneasy in mind and having all my clothes to pack up, and thinking of
something else, had quite forgotten Mrs. Hoggarty's brooch, which I
had stuck into my shirt-frill the night before.
CHAPTER II

TELLS HOW THE DIAMOND IS BROUGHT UP TO LONDON,
AND PRODUCES WONDERFUL EFFECTS BOTH IN THE CITY
AND AT THE WEST END
The circumstances recorded in this story took place some score of years
ago, when, as the reader may remember, there was a great mania in the
City of London for establishing companies of all sorts; by which many

people made pretty fortunes.
I was at this period, as the truth must be known, thirteenth clerk of
twenty-four young gents who did the immense business of the
Independent West Diddlesex Fire and Life Insurance Company, at their
splendid stone mansion in Cornhill. Mamma had sunk a sum of four
hundred pounds in the purchase of an annuity at this office, which paid
her no less than six-and-thirty pounds a year, when no other company
in London would give her more than twenty-four. The chairman of the
directors was the great Mr. Brough, of the house of Brough and Hoff,
Crutched Friars, Turkey Merchants. It was a new house, but did a
tremendous business in the fig and sponge way, and more in the Zante
currant line than any other firm in the City.
Brough was a great man among the Dissenting connection, and you
saw his name for hundreds at the head of every charitable society
patronised by those good people. He had nine clerks residing at his
office in Crutched Friars; he would not take one without a certificate
from the schoolmaster and clergyman of his native place, strongly
vouching for his morals and doctrine; and the places were so run after,
that he got a premium of four or five hundred pounds with each young
gent, whom he made to slave for ten hours a day, and to whom in
compensation he taught all the mysteries of the Turkish business. He
was a great man on 'Change, too; and our young chaps used to hear
from the stockbrokers' clerks (we commonly dined together at the
"Cock and Woolpack," a respectable house, where you get a capital cut
of meat, bread, vegetables, cheese, half a pint of porter, and a penny to
the waiter, for a shilling)--the young stockbrokers used to tell us of
immense bargains in Spanish, Greek, and Columbians, that Brough
made. Hoff had nothing to do with them, but stopped at home minding
exclusively the business of the house. He was a young chap, very quiet
and steady, of the Quaker persuasion, and had been taken into
partnership by Brough for a matter of thirty thousand pounds: and a
very good bargain too. I was told in the strictest confidence that the
house one year with another divided a good seven thousand pounds: of
which Brough had half, Hoff two-sixths, and the other sixth went to old
Tudlow, who had been Mr. Brough's clerk before the new partnership

began. Tudlow always went about very shabby, and we thought him an
old miser. One of our gents,