The first part of the request, at least, was very quickly obeyed, and two bottles were placed on the table, one of which the attorney bored in an instant, and had a good portion of it rebottled in his stomach by the time that Mr Thriven got his eyes taken off the roof of the chamber.
"Hand me half-a-tumbler!" cried he, "that I may gather my senses, and see the full extent of my misfortune."
"Misfortune!" echoed Sharp.
"Ay!" rejoined Samuel, as he turned the bottom of the tumbler to the roof. "Why did Grizel M'Whirter die, sir, until I got my discharge?"
"Ah, sir!" replied Sharp, on whom the wine was already beginning to operate, "you have thus a noble opportunity of being the architect of a reputation that might be the envy of the world. You can now pay your creditors in full—twenty shillings in the pound, and retain five thousand to yourself, with the character of being that noblest work of nature—an honest man.'
"When a thing is utterly beyond one's reach," rejoined Samuel, looking, with a wry face, right into the soul of the attorney, "how beautiful it appears."
Sharp accepted coolly the cut, because he had claret to heal it, otherwise he would have assuredly knocked down Mr Samuel Thriven.
"I beg your pardon, Mr Sharp!" continued his friend; "but I felt a little pained, sir, at the high-flown expression of the great good that awaits me, as if I were not already conscious of being, and known to be, that noblest work of nature. The cut came from you, Mr Sharp, and I only returned it. All I regret, sir, is, that my aunt did not live till I got my discharge, because then, not being bound to pay my creditors one farthing, I might have paid them in full, without obligation at all, and thereby have proved myself what I am—a generous man. No more of the claret. You must away with me to Cockenzie, to see that the repositories are sealed, and the will safe."
"By my faith, I forgot that!" replied Sharp; "a pretty good sign that, if you are a generous man, I am not a selfish one. We had better," he added, "let the claret alone till we return from Cockenzie. What think you?"
Now Samuel had already told Sharp that he was to have no more of the wine; and the question of the attorney, which was a clear forestaller, would have angered any man who was not an heir (five minutes old) of ten thousand. But Samuel knew better than to quarrel with the attorney at that juncture; so he answered him in the affirmative; and, in five minutes afterwards, the heir and the lawyer were in a coach, driving off to Cockenzie. The bankrupt was, in a few minutes more, in a dream—the principal vision of which was himself in the act of paying his creditors in full with their own money, and earning a splendid reputation for honesty. The sooner he performed the glorious act, the greater credit he would secure by it; his name would be in the "Courant" and "Mercury," headed by the large letters—"Praiseworthy instance of honesty coming out, in full strength, from the ordeal of fire."