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A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY 21
heart and his honesty had been ruined by it, that is to say ; and he
had received, in return for them, a small quantity of classics and
mathematics—pretty compensation for all he had lost in gaining
them !
But I am wandering most absurdly from the point; right
or wrong, so nature and education had formed Mr. Brandon, who
is one of a considerable class. Well, this young gentleman was
established at Mrs. Gann's house; and we are obliged to enter
into all these explanations concerning him, because they are
necessary to the right understanding of our story—Brandon not
being altogether a bad man, nor much worse than many a one
who goes through a course of regular selfish swindling all his life
long, and dies religious, resigned, proud of himself, and universally
respected by others ; for this eminent advantage has the gettingand-keeping
scoundrel over the extravagant and careless one.
One day, then, as he was gazing from the window of his lodginghouse,
a cart, containing a vast number of easels, portfolios, wooden
cases of pictures, and a small carpet-bag that might hold a change
of clothes, stopped at the door. The vehicle was accompanied by a
remarkable young fellow—dressed in a frock-coat covered over with
frogs, a dirty turned-down shirt-collar, with a blue satin cravat, and
a cap placed wonderfully on one ear—who had evidently hired apartments
at Mr. Gann's. This new lodger was no other than Mr. Andrew
Fitch ; or, as he wrote on his cards, without the prefix,
ANDREA FITCH.
Preparations had been made at Gann's for the reception of
Mr. Fitch, whose aunt (an auctioneer's lady in the town) had made
arrangements that he should board and lodge with the Gann family,
and have the apartments on the second floor as his private rooms.
In these, then, young Andrea was installed. He was a youth of
a poetic temperament, loving solitude; and where is such to be
found more easily than on the storm-washed shores of Margate in
winter? Then the boarding-house keepers have shut up their
houses and gone away in anguish; then the taverns take their
carpets up, and you can have your choice of a hundred and twenty
beds in any one of them ; then but one dismal waiter remains to
superintend this vast echoing pile of loneliness, and the landlord
pines for summer; then the flies for Ramsgate stand tenantless