"Thank our stars, we're off at last!" and, catching a glimpse of the house as the coach turned into Hatton-garden, she added, "there's the last of it, I hope; I never wish to set eyes on the hole again!"
"Don't be ungrateful," said Tweasle, chidingly. "That roof has sheltered me near forty years."
"Well, it was a nuisance to live in it,—no place to dry a rag in but the servant's bed-room."
"And Martha made you give her rum and water, mother, or else she would catch cold," added the son.
"Stop there!—stop there!—stop!" a voice was heard to cry.
"That can't be for us," observed Mrs. Tweasle.
As if in the spirit of matrimonial contradiction, her husband the next moment exclaimed, "By George! it is though!"
It proved to be a debtor, who had journeyed to London in consequence of some information which had been afforded him by an attorney. Three hundred and odd pounds were in his pocket ready for disbursement, if Mr. Tweasle would accompany him to an inn in the Borough, and there go through the account This was vexatious. The fear of losing the money had long disturbed the late tobacconist's mental monotony, and now the certainty of its payment absolutely angered him. He turned to his lady, and said to her in a voice of positive wrath,
"Hanney, I shall go. Don't you wait for me, do you hear? I shall walk probably in the evening down to Hornsey,—when I've given a receipt for the money. Now, sir, I'm at your service. Will you show the way?"
"Please to remember a poor fellow who wants works," said a florid muscular mendicant, thrusting his huge hand close to the late tobacconist's face.—"The fellow must have overheard the arrangement," thought Tweasle; and an undefined feeling of alarm took the roses from his cheeks. As he hastily threw the man a few pence, he delivered some very profound remarks upon the Vagrant Act.