“I wish I could, my dear Lucy; but I am miserably poor. Sir William, who was once the very soul of punctuality, has grown of late most neglectful. My last quarter is over-due two months. I must own all this has taken place since Dudley went to live at the Priory. I hear the expenses were something fabulous.”
“There was a great deal of waste; a great deal of mock splendor and real discomfort.”
“Is it true the wine bill was fifteen hundred pounds for the last year?”
“I think I heard it was something to that amount.”
“And four hundred for cigars?”
“No; that included pipes, and amber mouthpieces, and meerschaums for presents,—it rained presents!”
“And did Sir William make no remark or remonstrance about this?”
“I believe not. I rather think I heard that he liked it. They persuaded him that all these indiscretions, like his new wigs, and his rouge, and his embroidered waistcoats, made him quite juvenile, and that nothing made a man so youthful as living beyond his income.”
“It is easy enough to see how I was left in arrear; and you, dear, were you forgotten all this while and left without a shilling?”
“Oh, no; I could make as many debts as I pleased; and I pleased to make them, too, as they will discover one of these days. I never asked the price of anything, and therefore I enjoyed unlimited credit. If you remark, shopkeepers never dun the people who simply say, 'Send that home.'—How quickly you did your message, Richard! Have you brought an answer? Give it to me at once.”