Mr. M'Ruen looked very sharply at his young client from head to foot. 'I don't know about bail,' he said: 'it's very dangerous, very; why didn't you send for Mr. Norman or your cousin?'
'Because I didn't choose,' said Charley—'because I preferred sending to some one I could pay for the trouble.'
'Ha—ha—ha,' laughed M'Ruen; 'but that's just it—can you pay? You owe me a great deal of money, Mr. Tudor. You are so unpunctual, you know.'
'There are two ways of telling that story,' said Charley; 'but come, I don't want to quarrel with you about that now—you go bail for me now, and you'll find your advantage in it. You know that well enough.'
'Ha—ha—ha,' laughed the good-humoured usurer; 'ha—ha—ha—well, upon my word I don't know. You owe me a great deal of money, Mr. Tudor. Now, what o'clock is it by you, I wonder?'
Charley took out his watch—the Cox and Savary, before alluded to—and said that it was past seven.
'Aye; you've a very nice watch, I see. Come, Mr. Tudor, you owe me a great deal of money, and you are the most unpunctual young man I know; but yet I don't like to see you distressed. I'll tell you what, now—do you hand over your watch to me, just as a temporary loan—you can't want it here, you know; and I'll come down and bail you out to-morrow.'
Charley declined dealing on these terms; and then Mr. M'Ruen at last went away, leaving Charley to his fate, and lamenting quite pathetically that he was such an unpunctual young man, so very unpunctual that it was impossible to do anything to assist him. Charley, however, manfully resisted the second attack upon his devoted watch.
'That's very blue, very blue indeed,' said the master of the house, as Mr. M'Ruen took his departure—'ha'n't you got no huncles nor hants, nor nothin' of that sort?'
Charley declared that he had lots of uncles and aunts, grandfathers and grandmothers, and a perfect wealth of cousins, and that he would send for some of the leading members of his family to-morrow. Satisfied with this, the man supplied him with bread and cheese, gin and water, and plenty of tobacco; and, fortified with these comforts, Charley betook himself at last very lugubriously, to a filthy, uninviting bed.