“Well,” said he—fore-read and embarrassed but conscious of right—“the man was an earl’s fellow once.”
“It proves him the more admirable for being a rich man now!”
“Sir Robert, Sir Robert! ’tis an evil system and a mistaken. How is he rich? On the pitiful savings of shoeblacks and servant wenches. ’Tis such as he bid industry sit hands in lap and starve on illusive hopes. For a single chance in fifty thousand he buys her ruin; and what is all this but bitter gambling?”
“Ha, ha! old gentleman. We reach the point at once. But, believe me, sir, I never starved a servant wench or took anything from her but a kiss—and that I returned.”
The lawyer sighed.
“Go your ways,” he said. “You have your father’s laugh.”
“What—you knew him?”
“I had the fortune to do him a service once—’twas during the riots of ’68, when foul John Wilkes was committed to King’s Bench, on a writ of capias utlagatum, and the red-coats let fly at the mob. Your father commanded. They called it the St. George’s Fields massacre, and all concerned in it gained a mighty unpopularity.”
“Yet he was but a simple soldier and obeyed orders.”
“Well, sir, an unpopular king must needs have unpopular ministers, and so down the scale. Let a tyrant fall (I speak in illustration only—God bless his Majesty!) and his very scullions come down with him. I did Sir Robert a service, I say; and he repaid me with his confidence.”