“Don't waste a thought about me!” said Heathcote, good-humoredly.
“But I will!” cried O'Shea. “I 'll go down to the Horse Guards myself. Sure I'm forgetting already,” added he, with a sigh, “that we 're all 'out;' and now, for a trifle of five hundred, there's a fine chance lost as ever man had. You don't know anybody could accommodate one with a loan,—of course, on suitable terms?”
“Not one,—not one!”
“Or who 'd do it on a bill at three months, with our own names?”
“None!”
“Is n't it hard, I ask,—isn't it cruel,—just as I was making a figure in the House? I was the 'rising man of the party,'—so the 'Post' called me,—and the 'Freeman' said, 'O'Shea has only to be prudent, and his success is assured.' And wasn't I prudent? Didn't I keep out of the divisions for half the session? Who's your father's banker, Heathcote?”
“Drummonds, I believe; but I don't know them.”
“Murther! but it is hard! five hundred,—only five hundred. A real true-hearted patriot, fresh for his work, and without engagements, going for five hundred! I see you feel for me, my dear fellow,” cried he, grasping Heathcote's hand. “I hear what your heart is saying this minute: 'O'Shea, old boy, if I had the money, I 'd put it in the palm of your hand without the scratch of a pen between us.'”
“I 'm not quite so certain I should,” muttered the other, half sulkily.
“But I know you better than you know yourself, and I repeat it. You 'd say, 'Gorman O'Shea, I 'm not the man to see a first-rate fellow lost for a beggarly five hundred. I 'd rather be able to say one of these days, “Look at that man on the Woolsack,—or, maybe, Chief Justice in the Queen's Bench—well, would you believe it? if I hadn't helped him one morning with a few hundreds, it's maybe in the Serpentine he 'd have been, instead of up there.”' And as we 'd sit over a bottle of hock in the bay-window at Richmond, you 'd say, 'Does your Lordship remember the night when you heard the House was up, and you had n't as much as would pay your fare over to Ireland?'”