PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF MR. WATKINS TOTTLE. 125 



" That's a very strange circumstance/' interrupted the jocose Mr. 

 Walker, en passant. 



" I am his son, and have received a liberal education. I don't owe 

 no man nothing not the value of a farthing, but I was induced, you 

 see, to put my name to some bills for a friend bills to a large amount. 

 I may say a very large amount, for which I didn't receive no consi- 

 deration. What's the consequence ?" 



" Why, I suppose the bills went out, and you came in. The ac- 

 ceptances were'nt taken up, arid you were, eh ?'' inquired Walker. 



"To be sure/' replied the liberally-educated young gentleman. 

 " To be sure ; and so here I am, locked up for a matter of twelve 

 hundred pound." 



" Why don't you ask your old governor to stump up ?" inquired 

 Walker, with a somewhat sceptical air. 



" Oh ! bless you, he'd never do it," replied the other, in a tone of 

 expostulation " Never !" 



" Well, it is very odd to be sure," interposed the owner of the 

 flat bottle, mixing another glass, " but I've been in difficulties, as 

 one may say, now for thirty year. I went to pieces when I was in a milk- 

 walk, thirty year ago ; arter wards, when I was a fruiterer, and kept 

 a spring wan ; and arter that again in the coal and 'tatur line but 

 all that time, I never see a youngish chap come into a place of this 

 kind, who wasn't going out again directly, and who hadn't been ar- 

 rested on bills which he'd given a friend, and for which he'd re- 

 ceived nothing whatsomever not a fraction." 



"Oh ! it's always the cry," said Walker. "I can't see the use on 

 it ; that's what makes me so wild. Why, I should have a much bet- 

 ter opinion of an individual, if he'd say at once, in an honourable and 

 gentlemanly manner, as he'd done every body he possible could." 



" Ay, to be sure/' interposed the horse-dealer, with whose no- 

 tions of bargain and sale the axiom perfectly coincided, "so should I." 

 The young gentleman, who had given rise to these observations, 

 was on the point of offering a rather angry reply to these sneers, 

 but the rising of the young man before noticed, and of the female 

 who had been sitting by him, to leave the room, interrupted the con- 

 versation. She had been weeping bitterly, and the noxious atmos- 

 phere of the room acting upon her excited feelings and delicate frame, 

 rendered the support of her companion necessary as they quitted it 

 together. 



There was an air of superiority about them both, and something 

 in their appearance so unusual in such a place, that a respectful si- 

 lence was observed until the whirr r bang of the spring door an- 

 nounced that they were out of hearing. It was broken by the wife 

 of the ex-fruiterer. 



" Poor creetur !" said she, quenching a sigh in a rivulet of gin 

 and water. " She's very young." 



" She's a nice-loooking 'ooman, too," added the horse-dealer. 

 " What's he in for, Ikey ?'' inquired Walker, of an individual 

 who was spreading a cloth, with numerous blotches of mustard 

 upon it, on one of the tables, and whom Mr. Gabriel Parsons had no 



