Чарльз Диккенс
Nicholas Nickleby
The intelligence that they were to have a visitor – and such a visitor – next day, awakened in the breast of Mrs. Nickleby mingled feelings of exultation and regret; for whereas on the one hand she hailed it as an omen of her speedy restoration to good society and the almost-forgotten pleasures of morning calls and evening tea-drinkings, she could not, on the other, but reflect with bitterness of spirit on the absence of a silver teapot with an ivory knob on the lid, and a milk-jug to match, which had been the pride of her heart in days of yore, and had been kept from year’s end to year’s end wrapped up in wash-leather on a certain top shelf which now presented itself in lively colours to her sorrowing imagination.
‘I wonder who’s got that spice-box,’ said Mrs. Nickleby, shaking her head. ‘It used to stand in the left-hand corner, next but two to the pickled onions. You remember that spice-box, Kate?’
‘Perfectly well, mama.’
‘I shouldn’t think you did, Kate,’ returned Mrs. Nickleby, in a severe manner, ‘talking about it in that cold and unfeeling way! If there is any one thing that vexes me in these losses more than the losses themselves, I do protest and declare,’ said Mrs. Nickleby, rubbing her nose with an impassioned air, ‘that it is to have people about me who take things with such provoking calmness.’
‘My dear mama,’ said Kate, stealing her arm round her mother’s neck, ‘why do you say what I know you cannot seriously mean or think, or why be angry with me for being happy and content? You and Nicholas are left to me, we are together once again, and what regard can I have for a few trifling things of which we never feel the want? When I have seen all the misery and desolation that death can bring, and known the lonesome feeling of being solitary and alone in crowds, and all the agony of separation in grief and poverty when we most needed comfort and support from each other, can you wonder that I look upon this as a place of such delicious quiet and rest, that with you beside me I have nothing to wish for or regret? There was a time, and not long since, when all the comforts of our old home did come back upon me, I own, very often – oftener than you would think perhaps – but I affected to care nothing for them, in the hope that you would so be brought to regret them the less. I was not insensible, indeed. I might have felt happier if I had been. Dear mama,’ said Kate, in great agitation, ‘I know no difference between this home and that in which we were all so happy for so many years, except that the kindest and gentlest heart that ever ached on earth has passed in peace to heaven.’
‘Kate my dear, Kate,’ cried Mrs. Nickleby, folding her in her arms.
‘I have so often thought,’ sobbed Kate, ‘of all his kind words – of the last time he looked into my little room, as he passed upstairs to bed, and said “God bless you, darling.” There was a paleness in his face, mama – the broken heart – I know it was – I little thought so – then – ’
A gush of tears came to her relief, and Kate laid her head upon her mother’s breast, and wept like a little child.
It is an exquisite and beautiful thing in our nature, that when the heart is touched and softened by some tranquil happiness or affectionate feeling, the memory of the dead comes over it most powerfully and irresistibly. It would almost seem as though our better thoughts and sympathies were charms, in virtue of which the soul is enabled to hold some vague and mysterious intercourse with the spirits of those whom we dearly loved in life. Alas! how often and how long may those patient angels hover above us, watching for the spell which is so seldom uttered, and so soon forgotten!
Poor Mrs. Nickleby, accustomed to give ready utterance to whatever came uppermost in her mind, had never conceived the possibility of her daughter’s dwelling upon these thoughts in secret, the more especially as no hard trial or querulous reproach had ever drawn them from her. But now, when the happiness of all that Nicholas had just told them, and of their new and peaceful life, brought these recollections so strongly upon Kate that she could not suppress them, Mrs. Nickleby began to have a glimmering that she had been rather thoughtless now and then, and was conscious of something like self-reproach as she embraced her daughter, and yielded to the emotions which such a conversation naturally awakened.
There was a mighty bustle that night, and a vast quantity of preparation for the expected visitor, and a very large nosegay was brought from a gardener’s hard by, and cut up into a number of very small ones, with which Mrs. Nickleby would have garnished the little sitting-room, in a style that certainly could not have failed to attract anybody’s attention, if Kate had not offered to spare her the trouble, and arranged them in the prettiest and neatest manner possible. If the cottage ever looked pretty, it must have been on such a bright and sunshiny day as the next day was. But Smike’s pride in the garden, or Mrs. Nickleby’s in the condition of the furniture, or Kate’s in everything, was nothing to the pride with which Nicholas looked at Kate herself; and surely the costliest mansion in all England might have found in her beautiful face and graceful form its most exquisite and peerless ornament.
About six o’clock in the afternoon Mrs. Nickleby was thrown into a great flutter of spirits by the long-expected knock at the door, nor was this flutter at all composed by the audible tread of two pair of boots in the passage, which Mrs. Nickleby augured, in a breathless state, must be ‘the two Mr. Cheerybles;’ as it certainly was, though not the two Mrs. Nickleby expected, because it was Mr. Charles Cheeryble, and his nephew, Mr. Frank, who made a thousand apologies for his intrusion, which Mrs. Nickleby (having tea-spoons enough and to spare for all) most graciously received. Nor did the appearance of this unexpected visitor occasion the least embarrassment, (save in Kate, and that only to the extent of a blush or two at first,) for the old gentleman was so kind and cordial, and the young gentleman imitated him in this respect so well, that the usual stiffness and formality of a first meeting showed no signs of appearing, and Kate really more than once detected herself in the very act of wondering when it was going to begin.
At the tea-table there was plenty of conversation on a great variety of subjects, nor were there wanting jocose matters of discussion, such as they were; for young Mr. Cheeryble’s recent stay in Germany happening to be alluded to, old Mr. Cheeryble informed the company that the aforesaid young Mr. Cheeryble was suspected to have fallen deeply in love with the daughter of a certain German burgomaster. This accusation young Mr. Cheeryble most indignantly repelled, upon which Mrs. Nickleby slyly remarked, that she suspected, from the very warmth of the denial, there must be something in it. Young Mr. Cheeryble then earnestly entreated old Mr. Cheeryble to confess that it was all a jest, which old Mr. Cheeryble at last did, young Mr. Cheeryble being so much in earnest about it, that – as Mrs. Nickleby said many thousand times afterwards in recalling the scene – he ‘quite coloured,’ which she rightly considered a memorable circumstance, and one worthy of remark, young men not being as a class remarkable for modesty or self-denial, especially when there is a lady in the case, when, if they colour at all, it is rather their practice to colour the story, and not themselves.
After tea there was a walk in the garden, and the evening being very fine they strolled out at the garden-gate into some lanes and bye-roads, and sauntered up and down until it grew quite dark. The time seemed to pass very quickly with all the party. Kate went first, leaning upon her brother’s arm, and talking with him and Mr. Frank Cheeryble; and Mrs Nickleby and the elder gentleman followed at a short distance, the kindness of the good merchant, his interest in the welfare of Nicholas, and his admiration of Kate, so operating upon the good lady’s feelings, that the usual current of her speech was confined within very narrow and circumscribed limits. Smike (who, if he had ever been an object of interest in his life, had been one that day) accompanied them, joining sometimes one group and sometimes the other, as brother Charles, laying his hand upon his shoulder, bade him walk with him, or Nicholas, looking smilingly round, beckoned him to come and talk with the old friend who understood him best, and who could win a smile into his careworn face when none else could.
Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues – faith and hope. This was the pride which swelled Mrs. Nickleby’s heart that night, and this it was which left upon her face, glistening in the light when they returned home, traces of the most grateful tears she had ever shed.
There was a quiet mirth about the little supper, which harmonised exactly with this tone of feeling, and at length the two gentlemen took their leave. There was one circumstance in the leave-taking which occasioned a vast deal of smiling and pleasantry, and that was, that Mr. Frank Cheeryble offered his hand to Kate twice over, quite forgetting that he had bade her adieu already. This was held by the elder Mr. Cheeryble to be a convincing proof that he was thinking of his German flame, and the jest occasioned immense laughter. So easy is it to move light hearts.
In short, it was a day of serene and tranquil happiness; and as we all have some bright day – many of us, let us hope, among a crowd of others – to which we revert with particular delight, so this one was often looked back to afterwards, as holding a conspicuous place in the calendar of those who shared it.
Was there one exception, and that one he who needed to have been most happy?
Who was that who, in the silence of his own chamber, sunk upon his knees to pray as his first friend had taught him, and folding his hands and stretching them wildly in the air, fell upon his face in a passion of bitter grief?
CHAPTER 44
Mr. Ralph Nickleby cuts an old Acquaintance. It would also appear from the Contents hereof, that a Joke, even between Husband and Wife, may be sometimes carried too far
There are some men who, living with the one object of enriching themselves, no matter by what means, and being perfectly conscious of the baseness and rascality of the means which they will use every day towards this end, affect nevertheless – even to themselves – a high tone of moral rectitude, and shake their heads and sigh over the depravity of the world. Some of the craftiest scoundrels that ever walked this earth, or rather – for walking implies, at least, an erect position and the bearing of a man – that ever crawled and crept through life by its dirtiest and narrowest ways, will gravely jot down in diaries the events of every day, and keep a regular debtor and creditor account with Heaven, which shall always show a floating balance in their own favour. Whether this is a gratuitous (the only gratuitous) part of the falsehood and trickery of such men’s lives, or whether they really hope to cheat Heaven itself, and lay up treasure in the next world by the same process which has enabled them to lay up treasure in this – not to question how it is, so it is. And, doubtless, such book-keeping (like certain autobiographies which have enlightened the world) cannot fail to prove serviceable, in the one respect of sparing the recording Angel some time and labour.
Ralph Nickleby was not a man of this stamp. Stern, unyielding, dogged, and impenetrable, Ralph cared for nothing in life, or beyond it, save the gratification of two passions, avarice, the first and predominant appetite of his nature, and hatred, the second. Affecting to consider himself but a type of all humanity, he was at little pains to conceal his true character from the world in general, and in his own heart he exulted over and cherished every bad design as it had birth. The only scriptural admonition that Ralph Nickleby heeded, in the letter, was ‘know thyself.’ He knew himself well, and choosing to imagine that all mankind were cast in the same mould, hated them; for, though no man hates himself, the coldest among us having too much self-love for that, yet most men unconsciously judge the world from themselves, and it will be very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples.
But the present business of these adventures is with Ralph himself, who stood regarding Newman Noggs with a heavy frown, while that worthy took off his fingerless gloves, and spreading them carefully on the palm of his left hand, and flattening them with his right to take the creases out, proceeded to roll them up with an absent air as if he were utterly regardless of all things else, in the deep interest of the ceremonial.
‘Gone out of town!’ said Ralph, slowly. ‘A mistake of yours. Go back again.’
‘No mistake,’ returned Newman. ‘Not even going; gone.’
‘Has he turned girl or baby?’ muttered Ralph, with a fretful gesture.
‘I don’t know,’ said Newman, ‘but he’s gone.’
The repetition of the word ‘gone’ seemed to afford Newman Noggs inexpressible delight, in proportion as it annoyed Ralph Nickleby. He uttered the word with a full round emphasis, dwelling upon it as long as he decently could, and when he could hold out no longer without attracting observation, stood gasping it to himself as if even that were a satisfaction.
‘And where has he gone?’ said Ralph.
‘France,’ replied Newman. ‘Danger of another attack of erysipelas – a worse attack – in the head. So the doctors ordered him off. And he’s gone.’
‘And Lord Frederick – ?’ began Ralph.
‘He’s gone too,’ replied Newman.
‘And he carries his drubbing with him, does he?’ said Ralph, turning away; ‘pockets his bruises, and sneaks off without the retaliation of a word, or seeking the smallest reparation!’
‘He’s too ill,’ said Newman.
‘Too ill!’ repeated Ralph. ‘Why I would have it if I were dying; in that case I should only be the more determined to have it, and that without delay – I mean if I were he. But he’s too ill! Poor Sir Mulberry! Too ill!’
Uttering these words with supreme contempt and great irritation of manner, Ralph signed hastily to Newman to leave the room; and throwing himself into his chair, beat his foot impatiently upon the ground.
‘There is some spell about that boy,’ said Ralph, grinding his teeth. ‘Circumstances conspire to help him. Talk of fortune’s favours! What is even money to such Devil’s luck as this?’
He thrust his hands impatiently into his pockets, but notwithstanding his previous reflection there was some consolation there, for his face relaxed a little; and although there was still a deep frown upon the contracted brow, it was one of calculation, and not of disappointment.
‘This Hawk will come back, however,’ muttered Ralph; ‘and if I know the man (and I should by this time) his wrath will have lost nothing of its violence in the meanwhile. Obliged to live in retirement – the monotony of a sick-room to a man of his habits – no life – no drink – no play – nothing that he likes and lives by. He is not likely to forget his obligations to the cause of all this. Few men would; but he of all others? No, no!’
He smiled and shook his head, and resting his chin upon his hand, fell a musing, and smiled again. After a time he rose and rang the bell.
‘That Mr. Squeers; has he been here?’ said Ralph.
‘He was here last night. I left him here when I went home,’ returned Newman.
‘I know that, fool, do I not?’ said Ralph, irascibly. ‘Has he been here since? Was he here this morning?’
‘No,’ bawled Newman, in a very loud key.
‘If he comes while I am out – he is pretty sure to be here by nine tonight – let him wait. And if there’s another man with him, as there will be – perhaps,’ said Ralph, checking himself, ‘let him wait too.’
‘Let ‘em both wait?’ said Newman.
‘Ay,’ replied Ralph, turning upon him with an angry look. ‘Help me on with this spencer, and don’t repeat after me, like a croaking parrot.’
‘I wish I was a parrot,’ Newman, sulkily.
‘I wish you were,’ rejoined Ralph, drawing his spencer on; ‘I’d have wrung your neck long ago.’
Newman returned no answer to this compliment, but looked over Ralph’s shoulder for an instant, (he was adjusting the collar of the spencer behind, just then,) as if he were strongly disposed to tweak him by the nose. Meeting Ralph’s eye, however, he suddenly recalled his wandering fingers, and rubbed his own red nose with a vehemence quite astonishing.
Bestowing no further notice upon his eccentric follower than a threatening look, and an admonition to be careful and make no mistake, Ralph took his hat and gloves, and walked out.
He appeared to have a very extraordinary and miscellaneous connection, and very odd calls he made, some at great rich houses, and some at small poor ones, but all upon one subject: money. His face was a talisman to the porters and servants of his more dashing clients, and procured him ready admission, though he trudged on foot, and others, who were denied, rattled to the door in carriages. Here he was all softness and cringing civility; his step so light, that it scarcely produced a sound upon the thick carpets; his voice so soft that it was not audible beyond the person to whom it was addressed. But in the poorer habitations Ralph was another man; his boots creaked upon the passage floor as he walked boldly in; his voice was harsh and loud as he demanded the money that was overdue; his threats were coarse and angry. With another class of customers, Ralph was again another man. These were attorneys of more than doubtful reputation, who helped him to new business, or raised fresh profits upon old. With them Ralph was familiar and jocose, humorous upon the topics of the day, and especially pleasant upon bankruptcies and pecuniary difficulties that made good for trade. In short, it would have been difficult to have recognised the same man under these various aspects, but for the bulky leather case full of bills and notes which he drew from his pocket at every house, and the constant repetition of the same complaint, (varied only in tone and style of delivery,) that the world thought him rich, and that perhaps he might be if he had his own; but there was no getting money in when it was once out, either principal or interest, and it was a hard matter to live; even to live from day to day.
It was evening before a long round of such visits (interrupted only by a scanty dinner at an eating-house) terminated at Pimlico, and Ralph walked along St James’s Park, on his way home.
There were some deep schemes in his head, as the puckered brow and firmly-set mouth would have abundantly testified, even if they had been unaccompanied by a complete indifference to, or unconsciousness of, the objects about him. So complete was his abstraction, however, that Ralph, usually as quick-sighted as any man, did not observe that he was followed by a shambling figure, which at one time stole behind him with noiseless footsteps, at another crept a few paces before him, and at another glided along by his side; at all times regarding him with an eye so keen, and a look so eager and attentive, that it was more like the expression of an intrusive face in some powerful picture or strongly marked dream, than the scrutiny even of a most interested and anxious observer.
The sky had been lowering and dark for some time, and the commencement of a violent storm of rain drove Ralph for shelter to a tree. He was leaning against it with folded arms, still buried in thought, when, happening to raise his eyes, he suddenly met those of a man who, creeping round the trunk, peered into his face with a searching look. There was something in the usurer’s expression at the moment, which the man appeared to remember well, for it decided him; and stepping close up to Ralph, he pronounced his name.
Astonished for the moment, Ralph fell back a couple of paces and surveyed him from head to foot. A spare, dark, withered man, of about his own age, with a stooping body, and a very sinister face rendered more ill-favoured by hollow and hungry cheeks, deeply sunburnt, and thick black eyebrows, blacker in contrast with the perfect whiteness of his hair; roughly clothed in shabby garments, of a strange and uncouth make; and having about him an indefinable manner of depression and degradation – this, for a moment, was all he saw. But he looked again, and the face and person seemed gradually to grow less strange; to change as he looked, to subside and soften into lineaments that were familiar, until at last they resolved themselves, as if by some strange optical illusion, into those of one whom he had known for many years, and forgotten and lost sight of for nearly as many more.
The man saw that the recognition was mutual, and beckoning to Ralph to take his former place under the tree, and not to stand in the falling rain, of which, in his first surprise, he had been quite regardless, addressed him in a hoarse, faint tone.
‘You would hardly have known me from my voice, I suppose, Mr. Nickleby?’ he said.
‘No,’ returned Ralph, bending a severe look upon him. ‘Though there is something in that, that I remember now.’
‘There is little in me that you can call to mind as having been there eight years ago, I dare say?’ observed the other.
‘Quite enough,’ said Ralph, carelessly, and averting his face. ‘More than enough.’
‘If I had remained in doubt about you, Mr. Nickleby,’ said the other, ‘this reception, and your manner, would have decided me very soon.’
‘Did you expect any other?’ asked Ralph, sharply.
‘No!’ said the man.
‘You were right,’ retorted Ralph; ‘and as you feel no surprise, need express none.’
‘Mr. Nickleby,’ said the man, bluntly, after a brief pause, during which he had seemed to struggle with an inclination to answer him by some reproach, ‘will you hear a few words that I have to say?’
‘I am obliged to wait here till the rain holds a little,’ said Ralph, looking abroad. ‘If you talk, sir, I shall not put my fingers in my ears, though your talking may have as much effect as if I did.’
‘I was once in your confidence – ’ thus his companion began. Ralph looked round, and smiled involuntarily.
‘Well,’ said the other, ‘as much in your confidence as you ever chose to let anybody be.’
‘Ah!’ rejoined Ralph, folding his arms; ‘that’s another thing, quite another thing.’
‘Don’t let us play upon words, Mr. Nickleby, in the name of humanity.’
‘Of what?’ said Ralph.
‘Of humanity,’ replied the other, sternly. ‘I am hungry and in want. If the change that you must see in me after so long an absence – must see, for I, upon whom it has come by slow and hard degrees, see it and know it well – will not move you to pity, let the knowledge that bread; not the daily bread of the Lord’s Prayer, which, as it is offered up in cities like this, is understood to include half the luxuries of the world for the rich, and just as much coarse food as will support life for the poor – not that, but bread, a crust of dry hard bread, is beyond my reach today – let that have some weight with you, if nothing else has.’
‘If this is the usual form in which you beg, sir,’ said Ralph, ‘you have studied your part well; but if you will take advice from one who knows something of the world and its ways, I should recommend a lower tone; a little lower tone, or you stand a fair chance of being starved in good earnest.’
As he said this, Ralph clenched his left wrist tightly with his right hand, and inclining his head a little on one side and dropping his chin upon his breast, looked at him whom he addressed with a frowning, sullen face. The very picture of a man whom nothing could move or soften.
‘Yesterday was my first day in London,’ said the old man, glancing at his travel-stained dress and worn shoes.
‘It would have been better for you, I think, if it had been your last also,’ replied Ralph.
‘I have been seeking you these two days, where I thought you were most likely to be found,’ resumed the other more humbly, ‘and I met you here at last, when I had almost given up the hope of encountering you, Mr Nickleby.’
He seemed to wait for some reply, but Ralph giving him none, he continued:
‘I am a most miserable and wretched outcast, nearly sixty years old, and as destitute and helpless as a child of six.’
‘I am sixty years old, too,’ replied Ralph, ‘and am neither destitute nor helpless. Work. Don’t make fine play-acting speeches about bread, but earn it.’
‘How?’ cried the other. ‘Where? Show me the means. Will you give them to me – will you?’
‘I did once,’ replied Ralph, composedly; ‘you scarcely need ask me whether I will again.’
‘It’s twenty years ago, or more,’ said the man, in a suppressed voice, ‘since you and I fell out. You remember that? I claimed a share in the profits of some business I brought to you, and, as I persisted, you arrested me for an old advance of ten pounds, odd shillings, including interest at fifty per cent, or so.’
‘I remember something of it,’ replied Ralph, carelessly. ‘What then?’
‘That didn’t part us,’ said the man. ‘I made submission, being on the wrong side of the bolts and bars; and as you were not the made man then that you are now, you were glad enough to take back a clerk who wasn’t over nice, and who knew something of the trade you drove.’
‘You begged and prayed, and I consented,’ returned Ralph. ‘That was kind of me. Perhaps I did want you. I forget. I should think I did, or you would have begged in vain. You were useful; not too honest, not too delicate, not too nice of hand or heart; but useful.’
‘Useful, indeed!’ said the man. ‘Come. You had pinched and ground me down for some years before that, but I had served you faithfully up to that time, in spite of all your dog’s usage. Had I?’
Ralph made no reply.
‘Had I?’ said the man again.
‘You had had your wages,’ rejoined Ralph, ‘and had done your work. We stood on equal ground so far, and could both cry quits.’
‘Then, but not afterwards,’ said the other.
‘Not afterwards, certainly, nor even then, for (as you have just said) you owed me money, and do still,’ replied Ralph.
‘That’s not all,’ said the man, eagerly. ‘That’s not all. Mark that. I didn’t forget that old sore, trust me. Partly in remembrance of that, and partly in the hope of making money someday by the scheme, I took advantage of my position about you, and possessed myself of a hold upon you, which you would give half of all you have to know, and never can know but through me. I left you – long after that time, remember – and, for some poor trickery that came within the law, but was nothing to what you money-makers daily practise just outside its bounds, was sent away a convict for seven years. I have returned what you see me. Now, Mr Nickleby,’ said the man, with a strange mixture of humility and sense of power, ‘what help and assistance will you give me; what bribe, to speak out plainly? My expectations are not monstrous, but I must live, and to live I must eat and drink. Money is on your side, and hunger and thirst on mine. You may drive an easy bargain.’
‘Is that all?’ said Ralph, still eyeing his companion with the same steady look, and moving nothing but his lips.
‘It depends on you, Mr. Nickleby, whether that’s all or not,’ was the rejoinder.
‘Why then, harkye, Mr – , I don’t know by what name I am to call you,’ said Ralph.
‘By my old one, if you like.’
‘Why then, harkye, Mr. Brooker,’ said Ralph, in his harshest accents, ‘and don’t expect to draw another speech from me. Harkye, sir. I know you of old for a ready scoundrel, but you never had a stout heart; and hard work, with (maybe) chains upon those legs of yours, and shorter food than when I “pinched” and “ground” you, has blunted your wits, or you would not come with such a tale as this to me. You a hold upon me! Keep it, or publish it to the world, if you like.’
‘I can’t do that,’ interposed Brooker. ‘That wouldn’t serve me.’
‘Wouldn’t it?’ said Ralph. ‘It will serve you as much as bringing it to me, I promise you. To be plain with you, I am a careful man, and know my affairs thoroughly. I know the world, and the world knows me. Whatever you gleaned, or heard, or saw, when you served me, the world knows and magnifies already. You could tell it nothing that would surprise it, unless, indeed, it redounded to my credit or honour, and then it would scout you for a liar. And yet I don’t find business slack, or clients scrupulous. Quite the contrary. I am reviled or threatened every day by one man or another,’ said Ralph; ‘but things roll on just the same, and I don’t grow poorer either.’
‘I neither revile nor threaten,’ rejoined the man. ‘I can tell you of what you have lost by my act, what I only can restore, and what, if I die without restoring, dies with me, and never can be regained.’
‘I tell my money pretty accurately, and generally keep it in my own custody,’ said Ralph. ‘I look sharply after most men that I deal with, and most of all I looked sharply after you. You are welcome to all you have kept from me.’
‘Are those of your own name dear to you?’ said the man emphatically. ‘If they are – ’
‘They are not,’ returned Ralph, exasperated at this perseverance, and the thought of Nicholas, which the last question awakened. ‘They are not. If you had come as a common beggar, I might have thrown a sixpence to you in remembrance of the clever knave you used to be; but since you try to palm these stale tricks upon one you might have known better, I’ll not part with a halfpenny – nor would I to save you from rotting. And remember this, ‘scape-gallows,’ said Ralph, menacing him with his hand, ‘that if we meet again, and you so much as notice me by one begging gesture, you shall see the inside of a jail once more, and tighten this hold upon me in intervals of the hard labour that vagabonds are put to. There’s my answer to your trash. Take it.’
