“I shall be seventeen my next birthday,” said the other, flushing, and not wishing to add that there were eleven months and eight days to run before that event should come off.
“That's a mighty pretty time of life. It gives you a clear four years for irresponsible follies before you come of age. Then you may fairly count upon three or four more for legitimate wastefulness, and with a little, very little, discretion, you never need know a Jew till you're six-and-twenty.”
“I beg your pardon, my good fellow,” said the other, coloring, half angrily; “I've had plenty to do with those gents already. Ask Nathan whether he has n't whole sheafs of my bills. My guardian only allows me twelve hundred a year,—a downright shame they call it in the regiment, and so I wrote him word. In fact, I told him what our Major said, that with such means as mine I ought to try and manage an exchange into the Cape Rifles.”
“Or a black regiment in the West Indies,” chimed in O'Shea, gravely.
“No, confound it, he did n't say that!”
“The Irish Constabulary, too, is a cheap corps. You might stand that.”
“I don't mean to try either,” said the youth, angrily.
“And what does Nathan charge you?—say for a 'thing' at three months?”
“That all depends upon the state of the money-market,” said Agincourt, with a look of profoundest meaning. “It is entirely a question of the foreign exchanges, and I study them like a stockbroker. Nathan said one day, 'It's a thousand pities he's a Peer; there's a fellow with a head to beat the whole Stock Exchange.'”
“Does he make you pay twenty per cent, or five-and twenty for short dates?”