"What's in the wind now, my dear?" Mæcenas asked, surprised at his wife's altered tone. "You wouldn't hear of my doing any thing for the captain this morning: I wonder what has been a-changing of you."
"The captain is an Irishman," Mrs. Bungay replied; "and those Irish I have always said I couldn't abide. But his wife is a lady, as any one can see; and a good woman, and a clergyman's daughter, and a west of England woman, B., which I am myself, by my mother's side—and, O Marmaduke! didn't you remark her little gurl?"
"Yes, Mrs. B., I saw the little girl."
"And didn't you see how like she was to our angel, Bessy, Mr. B.?"—and Mrs. Bungay's thoughts flew back to a period eighteen years back, when Bacon and Bungay had just set up in business as small booksellers in a country town, and when she had had a child, named Bessy, something like the little Mary who had just moved her compassion.
"Well, well, my dear," Mr. Bungay said, seeing the little eyes of his wife begin to twinkle and grow red; "the captain ain't in for much. There's only a hundred and thirty pound against him. Half the money will take him out of the Fleet, Finucane says, and we'll pay him half salaries till he has made the account square. When the little 'un said, 'Why, don't you take Par out of pizn?' I did feel it, Elizabeth, upon my honor I did, now." And the upshot of this conversation was, that Mr. and Mrs. Bungay both ascended to the drawing-room, and Mr. Bungay made a heavy and clumsy speech, in which he announced to Mrs. Shandon, that, hearing sixty-five pounds would set her husband free, he was ready to advance that sum of money, deducting it from the captain's salary, and that he would give it to her on condition that she would personally settle with the creditors regarding her husband's liberation.
I think this was the happiest day that Mrs. Shandon and Mr. Finucane had had for a long time. "Bedad, Bungay, you're a trump!" roared out Fin, in an overpowering brogue and emotion. "Give us your fist, old boy: and won't we send the 'Pall-Mall Gazette' up to ten thousand a week, that's all!" and he jumped about the room, and tossed up little Mary, with a hundred frantic antics.
"If I could drive you any where in my carriage, Mrs. Shandon—I'm sure it's quite at your service," Mrs. Bungay said, looking out at a one-horsed vehicle which had just driven up, and in which this lady took the air considerably—and the two ladies, with little Mary between them (whose tiny hand Mæcenas's wife kept fixed in her great grasp), with the delighted Mr. Finucane on the back seat, drove away from Paternoster Row, as the owner of the vehicle threw triumphant glances at the opposite windows at Bacon's.
"It won't do the captain any good," thought Bungay, going back to his desk and accounts, "but Mrs. B. becomes reglar upset when she thinks about her misfortune. The child would have been of age yesterday, if she'd lived. Bessy told me so:" and he wondered how women did remember things.
We are happy to say that Mrs. Shandon sped with very good success upon her errand. She who had had to mollify creditors when she had no money at all, and only tears and entreaties wherewith to soothe them, found no difficulty in making them relent by means of a bribe of ten shillings in the pound; and the next Sunday was the last, for some time at least, which the captain spent in prison.