“Good gracious, I didn’t mean that, ma’am,” said my aunt. “I mean, are all these yours?”

“Madam,” replied Mr. Micawber, “it is a true bill.”

“And that eldest young gentleman, now,” said my aunt, musing, “what has he been brought up to?”

“It was my hope when I came here,” said Mr. Micawber, “to have got Wilkins into the Church: or perhaps I shall express my meaning more strictly, if I say the Choir. But there was no vacancy for a tenor in the venerable Pile for which this city is so justly eminent; and he has⁠—in short, he has contracted a habit of singing in public-houses, rather than in sacred edifices.”