At the end of six months
she married him, and was just beginning to enjoy the prestige which his
profession gave her, when Mr. Yager also passed away, becoming, as it
were, his own customer. Her legacy from him consisted of a complete
embalming outfit and a feeble little Yager who inherited her father's
tendency to spells.
Thus encumbered with two small girls, a less sanguine person would have
retired from the matrimonial market. But Mrs. Yager was not easily
discouraged; she was of a marrying nature, and evidently resolved that
neither man nor Providence should stand in her way. Again casting a
speculative eye over the field, she discerned a new shop in the alley,
the sign of which announced that the owner dealt in "Bungs and Fawcetts."
On the evening of the same day the chronic ailment from which the kitchen
sink had suffered for two years was declared to be acute, and Mr. Snawdor
was called in for consultation.
He was a timid, dejected person with a small pointed chin that trembled
when he spoke. Despite the easy conventions of the alley, he kept his
clothes neatly brushed and his shoes polished, and wore a collar on week
days. These signs of prosperity were his undoing. Before he had time to
realize what was happening to him, he had been skilfully jolted out of
his rut by the widow's experienced hand, and bumped over a hurried
courtship into a sudden marriage. He returned to consciousness to find
himself possessed of a wife and two stepchildren and moved from his small
neat room over his shop to the indescribable disorder of Number One.
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