“Most polite people on earth,” cried Basil. “And for poultry, I assure you, quite by themselves. True, upon my life; I can eat nobody’s ducks but the gypsies’. Ha, sir! Gypsy life is the real life, sir. Nothing to do with parchment, Doctor.”
“Why, no, young gentleman,” said Mizzlemist with dignity, “save, perhaps, when they go sheep-stealing.”
“No house-rent; no taxes; no rates; no infernal respectability,” cried Basil, bent upon his humour.
“Ha! ha! very good. Beggars all. Humph?” cried Bones. “Capital state, when people have no respectability. Ugh! it eats a beggar like me out of house and home.”
“Well, I didn’t imagine that, Colonel,” said Basil. “I thought you always put out your respectability to board on other people.”
“Capital! Very good! The fact is, my dear young sir—come, take a glass of wine—people won’t let me alone. They will carry me about with them; no doubt, to show their humility. I tell them I’m a beggar: what then? they will have the pauper with them—they will. Here’s the Doctor—would drag me out to-day, to come and look at old Carraways’ Lodge”—and again Bones emptied his glass.
“Of course,” said Mizzlemist: “if your friends didn’t look after you, Colonel, you’d never stir. You’d take no exercise. You’d sit in that arm-chair of yours till the sexton came for you. And the fact is”—and the Doctor archly smiled—“we’re not going to lose you in that way. No: it’s our duty as fellow-creatures and Christians to take care of you, and we will do it;” and Mizzlemist’s kindly emphasis almost brought the tears into his eyes. “Poor lone creature! You never knew what it was to have the tenderness of a wife. You haven’t a dear soul, growing all the kinder and tenderer for age, haunting your fireside; and so we must take care of you—and we will, old fellow.”
“All too good, much too good to a beggar,” cried Bones, with his fore-finger scratching the nape of his neck.
“Come, sir, take a glass of wine,” and Mizzlemist urged Basil. Then dropping back in his chair, he gazed at the young gentleman in all the fulness of after-dinner admiration. “Ha, sir! it is something delightful—nay, very delightful, indeed, only to look at you.”
“Indeed,” cried Basil, “glad to hear it. Easy way of getting a living. Shilling a-head for grown fools, six-pence for children. Come sir, down with your money.”