Page:Stubbs's Calendar or The Fatal Boots.djvu/15

Rh forbearance. I come of a tolerably good family; and yet, born to wealth—of an inoffensive disposition, careful of the money that I had, and eager to get more, I have been going down hill ever since my journey of life began, and have been pursued by a complication of misfortunes such as surely never happened to any man but the unhappy Bob Stubbs.

Bob Stubbs is my name; and I haven't got a shilling: I have borne the commission of a lieutenant in the service of King George, and am now—but never mind what I am now, for the public will know in a few pages more. My father was of the Suffolk Subbses—a well-to-do gentleman of Bungay. My grandfather had been a respected attorney in that town, and left my papa a pretty little fortune. I was thus the inheritor of competence, and ought to be at this moment a gentleman.

My misfortunes may be said to have commenced about a year before my birth, when my papa, a young fellow pretending to study the law in London, fell madly in love with Miss Smith, the daughter of a