“What is it then?—Heyday! a bill!—Then you’re worse than a beggar—a dun!—a dun! in the public streets, at your time of life! You little rascal, why what will you come to before you are your father’s age?” The boy sighed. “If,” pursued the colonel, “I were to serve you right, I should give you a good horse-whipping. Do you see this whip?”
“I do, sir,” said the boy; “but——”
“But what? you insolent little dun!—But what?”
“My father is dying,” said the child, bursting into tears, “and we have no money to buy him bread, or any thing.”
Struck by these words, Pembroke snatched the paper from the boy, and looking hastily at the total and title of the bill, read—“Twelve pounds fourteen—John White, weaver.”—“I know of no such person!—I have no dealings with weavers, child,” said the colonel, laughing: “My name’s Pembroke—Colonel Pembroke.”
“Colonel Pembroke—yes, sir, the very person Mr. Close, the tailor, sent me to!”
“Close the tailor! D—n the rascal: was it he sent you to dun me? For this trick he shall not see a farthing of my money this twelvemonth. You may tell him so, you little whining hypocrite!—And, hark you! the next time you come to me, take care to come with a better story—let your father and mother, and six brothers and sisters, be all lying ill of the fever—do you understand?”
He tore the bill into bits as he spoke, and showered it over the boy’s head. Pembroke’s companions laughed at this operation, and he facetiously called it “powdering a dun.” They rode off to the Park in high spirits; and the poor boy picked up the half-crown, and returned home. His home was in a lane in Moorfields, about three miles distant from this gay part of the town. As the child had not eaten any thing that morning, he was feeble, and grew faint as he was crossing Covent Garden. He sat down upon the corner of a stage of flowers.
“What are you doing there?” cried a surly man, pulling him up by the arm; “What business have you lounging and loitering here, breaking my best balsam?”
“I did not mean to do any harm—I am not loitering, indeed, sir,—I’m only weak,” said the boy, “and hungry.”