"Thass all right, Tommy, thass all right. We 're both Irishmen," responded the dramatist.
As Sheridan spoke he opened the window and standing beside it drew long draughts of the cool fresh evening air into his lungs. Moore sat quietly waiting for his friend to regain the sobriety he knew would not be long in returning, now that he had passed through the muddled stage and emerged upon the borders of ordinary intelligence. Meanwhile he was trying to evolve some plan to avert the danger threatening his friends with such dire misfortune. For the aged poet to languish in the foulness of a debtor's prison for more than a week would be to sign his death-warrant. The horrible condition of the places of confinement consecrated to the incarceration of gentlemen who involved themselves to an extent beyond their ability to pay was one of the strongest inducements that could be brought to bear by a creditor to force to the settlement of long-standing obligations a certain type of debtor--he who could pay if he willed to make the sacrifice of personal convenience, and to curtail the indulgences common usage made the essential pleasures of the gay life of the sporty young buck of the period. For this reason more than any other was the condition of these vile dens allowed to go unimproved in spite of an occasional vigorous protest from some noble but impoverished family whose ne'er-do-well offspring was compelled to lie indefinitely in squalor as new as it was repugnant to his elegant sensibilities. That Bessie would make any sacrifice to keep her father from such a fate Moore felt assured. There was only one way to block Sir Percival's game. The money must be paid. But how? The returns from Moore's book had enabled him to settle his debts in both Ireland and England, but, up to this time, very little more than enough to accomplish this result and support him as his new position demanded had come from his publisher, McDermot. It was true that the sudden glow of enthusiasm usually experienced by a bookseller after the publication of a successful book had led the close-fisted and stony-hearted old Scotchman to declare his willingness to pay a generous sum in advance for a new poem, upon an oriental theme, which Lord Lansdowne had suggested to Moore, providing this bonus should give him the exclusive right of publication for the term of two years to all literary output from the pen of the young Irishman. However, Moore felt confident that the sum McDermot would be willing to pay to bind the bargain would be far less than the thousand he required. How, then, could he raise such an enormous amount?
Sheridan, who was fast sobering, thanks to the bracing air, closed the window with a shiver and turned to his young friend.
"What will you do, Tommy?" he asked, only a slight trace of his former thickness of tongue perceptible.
"Do, Sherry? I 'll have to raise the money."
"Have you it?" demanded the wit, regarding Moore in amazement.
"Not I, Sherry. It's taken all I 've earned so far to pay my debts."
"Debts?" snorted Sheridan, contemptuously. "Let this be a lesson to you, Tom. Never pay anything. I never do."
"You, Sherry? Have you any money?"
"None, except what I have in my pockets," replied Sheridan, hopelessly. At this moment Mr. Brummell, deserted by Mrs. FitzHerbert, and weary of the senseless gabble so liberally dispensed by nine of every ten females gracing social functions of magnitude, wandered back into the conservatory in search of quiet. Spying two of his closest cronies, he made haste to join them.