“Let’s see? we’ve got to meet Styles to-morrow at three in the afternoon,” said Curtis; “and, by Jove! we must make him come down with the dust.”
“Be the power-rs! and you’re right, my frind!” exclaimed the captain. “It’s eighteen-pince that’s left in my pocket at this prisint spaking——”
“And nothing at all in mine,” interrupted Frank, both his hands diving at the same time down into the depths of the empty conveniences alluded to. “Deuce take this railway affair! It gets on precious slow. I remember when I was in Paris two or three-and-twenty years ago, they were making a new path-way through my friend the Archbishop’s estate at Fontainbleau; and if his Grace didn’t go and swear at the men all day long, they never would have got on with it.”
“Be the power-rs! if it’s a thrifle of swearing that would make Misther Styles push a-head,” said the gallant officer, “I’m the boy to help him on with that same.”
“You see there’s been what they call a tightness in the Money-Market lately,” observed Frank: “at least, that’s what Styles told me the other day——”
“And it’s an infer-r-rnal tightness that’s got hould of our Money-Market, my frind,” interrupted the captain. “Be Jasus! there’s the potheen bottle empty—and no tick at the public!”
“You’ve got eighteen-pence in your pocket, captain,” suggested Curtis.
“Right, me boy!”—and he rang the bell furiously.
The slip-shod girl answered the summons, and was forthwith despatched for a supply of whiskey at the wine-vaults which the lodgers honoured with their custom.
“Now we’re altogether aground,” said Curtis, after a pause which had followed the departure of the servant. “But we’ve every thing necessary in the house for to-morrow morning’s breakfast, except the milk——”