“Pshaw! you are a fool,” answered Mowbray.
“That is not unlikely,” said Meiklewham; “but so is Sir Bingo Binks, and yet he's had the better of you, St. Ronan's, this twa or three times.”
“It is false!—he has not,” answered St. Ronan's, fiercely.
“Weel I wot,” resumed Meiklewham, “he took you in about the saumon fish, and some other wager ye lost to him this very day.”
“I tell you once more, Meiklewham, you are a fool, and no more up to my trim than you are to the longitude.—Bingo is got shy—I must give him a little line, that is all—then I shall strike him to purpose—I am as sure of him as I am of the other—I know the fly they will both rise to—this cursed want of five hundred will do me out of ten thousand!”
“If you are so certain of being the bangster—so very certain, I mean, of sweeping stakes,—what harm will Miss Clara come to by your having the use of her siller? You can make it up to her for the risk ten times told.”
“And so I can, by Heaven!” said St. Ronan's. “Mick, you are right, and I am a scrupulous, chicken-hearted fool. Clara shall have a thousand for her poor five hundred—she shall, by ——. And I will carry her to Edinburgh for a season, or perhaps to London, and we will have the best advice for her case, and the best company to divert her. And if they think her a little odd—why, d—— me, I am her brother, and will bear her through it. Yes—yes—you're right; there can be no hurt in borrowing five hundred of her for a few days, when such profit may be made on't, both for her and me.—Here, fill the glasses, my old boy, and drink success to it, for you are right.”
“Here is success to it, with all my heart,” answered Meiklewham, heartily glad to see his patron's sanguine temper arrive at this desirable conclusion, and yet willing to hedge in his own credit; “but it is you are right, and not me, for I advise nothing except on your assurances, that you can make your ain of this English earl, and of this Sir Bingo—and if you can but do that, I am sure it would be unwise and unkind in ony ane of your friends to stand in your light.”
“True, Mick, true,” answered Mowbray.—“And yet dice and cards are but bones and pasteboard, and the best horse ever started may slip a shoulder before he get to the winning-post—and so I wish Clara's venture had not been in such a bottom.—But, hang it, care killed a cat—I can hedge as well as any one, if the odds turn up against me—so let us have the cash, Mick.”