In the fulness of time, this correspondence showing signs of wearing out, and seeming to require an effort on the part of the correspondents to which in the hurried circumstances of departure many of them might not be equal, he established the custom of attending collegians of a certain standing, to the gate, and taking leave of them there. The collegian under treatment, after shaking hands, would occasionally stop to wrap up something in a bit of paper, and would come back again calling ‘Hi!’
He would look round surprised.‘Me?’ he would say, with a smile.
By this time the collegian would be up with him, and he would paternally add, ‘What have you forgotten? What can I do for you?’
‘I forgot to leave this,’ the collegian would usually return, ‘for the Father of the Marshalsea.’
‘My good sir,’ he would rejoin, ‘he is infinitely obliged to you.’ But, to the last, the irresolute hand of old would remain in the pocket into which he had slipped the money during two or three turns about the yard, lest the transaction should be too conspicuous to the general body of collegians.
One afternoon he had been doing the honours of the place to a rather large party of collegians, who happened to be going out, when, as he was coming back, he encountered one from the poor side who had been taken in execution for a small sum a week before, had ‘settled’ in the course of that afternoon, and was going out too. The man was a mere Plasterer in his working dress; had his wife with him, and a bundle; and was in high spirits.
‘God bless you, sir,’ he said in passing.
‘And you,’ benignantly returned the Father of the Marshalsea.
They were pretty far divided, going their several ways, when the Plasterer called out, ‘I say!—sir!’ and came back to him.
‘It ain’t much,’ said the Plasterer, putting a little pile of halfpence in his hand, ‘but it’s well meant.’