Adding to the consideration of Mr. Bob Peters' severely straitened costume the fact that he was smoking an incredibly cheap segar, it is reasonable to infer that he was rather hard-up when awake and not much troubled with soft down when asleep.
Viewing Mr. Bob Peters financially and judging him by a golden rule, one could see about him considerable that was due unto others, as each of the others was likely to be dun unto him.
"Bless my soul!" soliloquized Mr. Bob Peters, hastily turning from a long and profound contemplation of himself in the mirror and commencing to pace noiselessly up and down the room,—"here's misery! Shut up in the garret of one of the First Families, with a chap thirsting for my blood at the head of the domestic circle down stairs, and the whole Confederacy ready to bolt me without salt—which is very dear here just now. Here's a situation for an unmarried man!" exclaimed Mr. Bob Peters, insanely tearing his "Marie Stuart" from his head and bitterly crunching it in his hand—"confined here as a prisoner by the young woman of my affections to save my life from her own father's sanguinary designs. Upon my soul!" groaned Mr. Bob Peters, drearily slapping his left leg, "it's enough to make me take to drinking, and I—"
"Dear Bob!"
Were you ever awakened from a horrid nightmare dream of capital punishment and sudden death, mon ami, by the soft, persuasive voice of woman calling you to a breakfast of etherial rolls and new-born eggs? If
so, you can understand the feelings of Mr. Peters when these fond words roused him from his terrible reverie.
He spun blithely round on his dexter heel, absorbed the faithful Libby to his manly breast, and incontinently kissed for his lips a coating of lustrous bandoline from the head of the fashionable maiden.
"Oh bliss!" ejaculated Mr. Bob Peters, standing on one foot by way of intensifying the sensation, "my angel visits me in my dungeon, as angels visited other good men in the Scriptures."
"Oh Bob, how you do smell of smoke," said the devoted Libby.
"And thanks to your thoughtfulness for the regalias which have so lightened my lonely hours, since the day when you brought me up to this room and then told a virtuous and unsuspecting police that I had fled in the direction of the aurora borealis. By the way Libby," said Mr. Bob Peters, thoughtfully, "my segar-lighters are all out, and if you could make me a few more out of the rest of those Confederate Treasury Notes—"