"About Kate Mellon,--tremendous scene just before I left;" and Mr. Beresford proceeded to recount the dialogue between him and Kate Mellon, which was recorded in the fourth chapter of this story. He told the tale honestly throughout, and when he had finished he looked up in Mr. Simnel's face, and said, "Deuced awkward position, wasn't it?"
Mr. Simnel had not lost one word of the story; on the contrary, he had listened to it with the greatest eagerness and interest, but he did not answer Mr. Beresford's final query. He had fallen into his old, leg-nursing attitude, and was rocking himself silently to and fro.
"Devilish unpleasant, wasn't it?" reiterated Mr. Beresford.
"Eh!" said Mr. Simnel in a loud high key. "Yes, most unpleasant, of course. We'll talk more about that; but you must be off now. To-day's only half a day, you know; and I've got all sorts of things to do before I go. You shall have that two hundred on Monday, all right. Good-by! see you on Monday," and the Secretary shook hands with the Commissioner until the latter was fairly outside the door.
Then Mr. Simnel returned to his desk, and took up his leg again.
"It seems to be coming on now," he said to himself, "and all together too. The old man always meant little Alice for a Duke, and now to let her go to such carrion as old Schröder; that looks like smash. He holds heavily in Pernambucos, in Cotopaxis, and other stuff that's run down like water lately; and he must have dropped at least ten thousand in that blessed Bird-in-the-Hand insurance. I think the time has come to put the screw on, and I don't think"--turning to a drawer and taking from an envelope a paper yellow with age--"that he'll dishonour this. What an awful time ago it seems! There,"--replacing the paper,--"go back till you're wanted. You've kept so long that--Ah, by Jove! the other business! To be married, eh? To be married, Kate?" releasing his leg and plucking at his lips. "To be married to Master Charley Beresford! not while I live, my child! not while I live, and have power to turn a screw on in your direction too!"
[CHAPTER XII.]
WHERE MR. PRINGLE WENT TO.
It has been notified in a previous chapter that Mr. Pringle was in some mental anxiety touching the acquisition of a certain twenty pounds which he required for immediate disbursement. This position he held in common with many of his colleagues at the Tin-Tax Office, and indeed with most junior clerks in the Civil Service. "The truth is," says Captain Smoke, in Douglas Jerrold's comedy, The Bubbles of the Day, "I want a thousand pounds." "My dear Smoke," says his friend, "there never was a man yet that did not want a thousand pounds." The truth of the axiom is undeniable; only in the Civil Service the amount is much diminished. Twenty pounds, familiarly known as a "twentyer," is generally the much-desiderated sum among the junior slaves of the Crown; and it was for a "twentyer" that Mr. Pringle now pined. A hosier who some two years before had sued for Mr. Pringle's custom, nor sued in vain,--who had supplied him with under-linen of fine texture and high price, with shirts of brilliant and variegated patterns, with boating jerseys and socks so vivid in stripe that his legs resembled those of the functionary in the opening of the pantomime who by the boys in the gallery is prematurely recognised as the future clown, owing to the resplendent beauty of his ankles,--at length, after repeated transmissions of his "little account," and after mystic hints that he had not yet seen the colour of Mr. Pringle's money, brought into action the terrible engines of the law, and summoned his debtor to the County Court.
It was at the very latter end of the quarter when this legal ukase was placed in Mr. Pringle's hands, and that gentleman, examining his capital, found it consist of thirty-seven shillings, a silver threepence, and a penny,--which sums were to provide his dinners, cigars, and general pleasures for a fortnight. Clearly, then, out of this no compromise could be effected; he could not even go through that performance so dear to the hard-pressed debtor, which is temporarily so soothing and in the end so futile, known as paying "something on account." A five-pound note has the same effect on a tradesman to whom twenty pounds are owing as a wet brush on a very bad hat,--it creates a temporary gleam of comfort, but nothing more. Mr. Pringle had not even this resource: if he were summoned to the County Court, and if the investigation were reported, as it was sure to be, in The Dalston Dreadnought and De Beauvoir Town Looker-on, he should get horribly chaffed by his comrades, perhaps pitched into by the Board, and it would bring all his other creditors down on him. So something must be done, and cash must be raised at once. Mr. Pringle did not know where to turn: he had never been a borrower, and hated the idea of asking money favours from his friends; moreover, in real truth, he would not have known whom to turn to, had he been so minded. Prescott, his Pylades, was by no means overburdened with money--indeed, Kinchenton's income only sufficed for the keeping up of his modest establishment and for the schooling of Percy; while Dibb, Crump, Boppy, or any of the other office men, were utterly impracticable in such a case. Finally, he determined that he must "do a bill;" an act of which he had hitherto been innocent, and towards the proper accomplishment of which he thought it best to take the advice of Mr. Rittman.