"Nor the bills."
"No."
"Nor the vouchers?"
"No."
"Oh dear! oh dear! how hard you are grown; and you so young and so handsome, so little like—"
"Never mind the resemblance, but answer me. How much?"
"It 's impossible, my Lord Shorge!" "Will two hundred do? Well, two fifty?" "No, nor twelve fifty, my Lord. I will have my claim." "That 's what I want to come at, Lazzy. How much?" This process goes on for half an hour, without any apparent result on either side; when, at last, Lord George, taking out his pocket-book, proceeds to count various bank-notes on the table. The effect is magical; the sight of the money melts Lazarus,—he hesitates, and gives in. Of course his compliance does not cost him much; fifty per cent is the very lowest we escape for! But even at this, Tom, our bargain is a good one.
I see it all, Tom; they are bent on getting to a watering-place, and that's exactly the very thing I won't stand. Our Irish notions on these subjects are all taken from Bundoran, or Kilkee, or Dunmore, or some such localities; and where, to say the least, there is not a great deal to find fault with. Tiresome they are enough; and, after a week or so, one gets wearied of always walking over ankles in deep sand, listening to the plash of the tide, or the less musical squall of some half-drowned baby, or sitting on a rock to watch some miraculous draught of fishes, that is sure to be sent off some twenty miles into the interior. These, and occasional pictorial studies of your acquaintances, in all the fascinations of oil-skin caps and wet drapery, tire at last. But they are cheap pleasures, Tom; and, as the world goes, that is something.
Now, from all I can learn, for I know nothing of them myself, your foreign watering-place is just a big city taking an airing. The self-same habits of dress, late hours, play, dancing, debt, and dissipation; the great difference being that wickedness is cultivated in straw hats and Russia-duck, instead of its more conventional costume of black coat and trousers! From my own brief experience of life, I think a garden by moonlight is just as dangerous as a conservatory with colored lamps; and a polka in public is less perilous than a mountain excursion, even on donkeys! They 'll not catch me at that game, Tom!
I have just discovered in "Cochrane's Guide"—for I have burned my "John Murray"—the very place to suit me,—Bonn on the Rhine. He says it has a pleasant appearance, and contains 1,300 houses and 15,000 inhabitants, and that the Star, kept by one Schmidt, is reasonable, and that he speaks English, and takes in the "Galignani,"—two evidences of civilization not to be despised.