“I fear not,” replied Mr. Pickwick. “I refuse to pay some damages, and am here in consequence.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Smangle, “paper has been my ruin.”
“A stationer, I presume, sir?” said Mr. Pickwick, innocently.
“Stationer! No, no; confound and curse me! Not so low as that. No trade. When I say paper, I mean bills.”
“Oh, you use the word in that sense. I see,” said Mr. Pickwick.
“Damme! A gentleman must expect reverses,” said Smangle. “What of that? Here am I in the Fleet Prison. Well; good. What then? I’m none the worse for that, am I?”
“Not a bit,” replied Mr. Mivins. And he was quite right; for, so far from Mr. Smangle being any the worse for it, he was something the better, inasmuch as to qualify himself for the place, he had obtained gratuitous possession of certain articles of jewellery, which, long before that, had found their way to the pawnbroker’s.
“Well; but come,” said Mr. Smangle; “this is dry work. Let’s rinse our mouths with a drop of burnt sherry; the last comer shall stand it, Mivins shall fetch it, and I’ll help to drink it. That’s a fair and gentlemanlike division of labour, anyhow. Curse me!”
Unwilling to hazard another quarrel, Mr. Pickwick gladly assented to the proposition, and consigned the money to Mr. Mivins, who, as it was nearly eleven o’clock, lost no time in repairing to the coffee-room on his errand.
“I say,” whispered Smangle, the moment his friend had left the room; “what did you give him?”