“Am I, or am I not your master, Nancy?” said I, in a very melancholy tone.
“You my master! Come up, mister himperence,” replied Nancy. “My master is in yonder bed, young man. Run, Sip, and call a policeman. He’ll make you know your master, jail-bird.”
“Ah!” thought I, “it’s all up, I see. That fellow’s me, and I’m somebody else, but hang me if I know who. Well, as I don’t choose to take a morning airing at Hatton Garden, I might as well abdicate at once. But,” cried I, “you scoundrel, you shall pay for this.”
“Turn him out, Sip!” grunted my former voice from the bed. How hateful it sounded! “Turn him out, and don’t let me be disturbed till twelve. My head aches confoundedly.”
I sneaked out of my own room like a detected pickpocket, Nancy and Scipio attending me down stairs, and delivering a brace of running lectures upon the evil courses which I was pursuing, admonishing me likewise of the certain and ignominious end which awaits such depraved and dissolute characters as I was presumed to be. At the foot of the stairs, Scipio insisted upon searching me, an operation to which, crest-fallen as I was, I did not pretend to make the slightest opposition. I was then dismissed in the same manner with Master Candide from the château of Thonderdentronck, namely with grands coups de pied dans le derrière, pretty well administered by a brace of sturdy valets, whom Scipio had summoned to his assistance from a neighboring area.
This ejection from my own mansion took place about half past nine o’clock. In the first impulses of my rage and despair, I resolved to apply to my friends, in order to establish my identity by their testimonies. It was early; too early in fact to find any of them up, and I was fain to stroll the streets until the lingering hands of the clock should signify the proper and canonical hour of rising. So I patrolled Hyde Park for an hour or so, until my insides began to give me very unequivocal tokens of their desire for breakfast. Rage, as well as love and all other sublunary matters, must yield to the calls of hunger. I entered a coffee-house in Upper Brook street, and ordered my morning meal. I drank a couple of cups of tea, ate a French roll and a modicum of raw beefsteak, and walked to the bar to pay my bill. I put my hand into my pocket in search of my purse. It was not there. I tried another, and another, and yet another pocket. Horrid to relate, I could not meet with the smallest coin of the realm! The waiter began to look very black, and I could overhear the monosyllable “bilk” ground out between his teeth in a tone which indicated profound aversion and contempt. My hair fairly stood on end. Nevertheless I thought it best to brazen it out.
“Do you see, my good fellow,” said I, and I assure you, I spoke in a very bland and courteous tone, “I have most unaccountably forgotten my purse—”
“Gammon!” was the very significant response of the Ganymede. “How d’ye know you ever had one?”
“Confound your impudence, fellow!” said I, nettled by the coolness of the query. “What d’ ye mean by insulting a gentleman?”
“More like a swell out o’ luck,” growled the servitor. “Come, young ’un, this here kind of a job’s no go. Post the cole, my boy, or it’ll be the worse for somebody.”