So successful a watch and ward had been established over the young lady
by this judicious parent, that she had grown up highly ornamental, but
perfectly helpless and useless. With her character thus happily formed,
in the first bloom of her youth she had encountered Mr. Pocket: who was
also in the first bloom of youth, and not quite decided whether to mount
to the Woolsack, or to roof himself in with a mitre. As his doing the
one or the other was a mere question of time, he and Mrs. Pocket had
taken Time by the forelock (when, to judge from its length, it would
seem to have wanted cutting), and had married without the knowledge of
the judicious parent. The judicious parent, having nothing to bestow or
withhold but his blessing, had handsomely settled that dower upon them
after a short struggle, and had informed Mr. Pocket that his wife was "a
treasure for a Prince." Mr. Pocket had invested the Prince's treasure
in the ways of the world ever since, and it was supposed to have brought
him in but indifferent interest. Still, Mrs. Pocket was in general the
object of a queer sort of respectful pity, because she had not married
a title; while Mr. Pocket was the object of a queer sort of forgiving
reproach, because he had never got one.

Mr. Pocket took me into the house and showed me my room: which was a
pleasant one, and so furnished as that I could use it with comfort for
my own private sitting-room. He then knocked at the doors of two other
similar rooms, and introduced me to their occupants, by name Drummle
and Startop. Drummle, an old-looking young man of a heavy order of
architecture, was whistling. Startop, younger in years and appearance,
was reading and holding his head, as if he thought himself in danger of
exploding it with too strong a charge of knowledge.