A Rescue and a Catastrophe

Friend Rawdon drove on then to Mr. Moss's mansion in Cursitor Street,
and was duly inducted into that dismal place of hospitality. Morning
was breaking over the cheerful house-tops of Chancery Lane as the
rattling cab woke up the echoes there. A little pink-eyed Jew-boy,
with a head as ruddy as the rising morn, let the party into the house,
and Rawdon was welcomed to the ground-floor apartments by Mr. Moss, his
travelling companion and host, who cheerfully asked him if he would
like a glass of something warm after his drive.

The Colonel was not so depressed as some mortals would be, who,
quitting a palace and a placens uxor, find themselves barred into a
spunging-house; for, if the truth must be told, he had been a lodger at
Mr. Moss's establishment once or twice before. We have not thought it
necessary in the previous course of this narrative to mention these
trivial little domestic incidents: but the reader may be assured that
they can't unfrequently occur in the life of a man who lives on nothing
a year.

Upon his first visit to Mr. Moss, the Colonel, then a bachelor, had
been liberated by the generosity of his aunt; on the second mishap,
little Becky, with the greatest spirit and kindness, had borrowed a sum
of money from Lord Southdown and had coaxed her husband's creditor (who
was her shawl, velvet-gown, lace pocket-handkerchief, trinket, and
gim-crack purveyor, indeed) to take a portion of the sum claimed and
Rawdon's promissory note for the remainder: so on both these occasions
the capture and release had been conducted with the utmost gallantry on
all sides, and Moss and the Colonel were therefore on the very best of
terms.