"I thought you swore on your honor to your wife that you wouldn't put your name to paper," said Mr. Altamont, puffing at his cigar.
"Why does she leave me without pocket-money then? Damme, I must have money," cried out the baronet. "Oh, Am--, Oh, Altamont, I'm the most miserable beggar alive."
"You'd like a chap to lend you a twenty-pound-note, wouldn't you now?" the other asked.
"If you would, I'd be grateful to you forever--forever, my dearest friend," cried Clavering. "How much would you give? Will you give a fifty-pound bill, at six months, for half down and half in plate," asked Altamont.
"Yes, I would, so help me--, and pay it on the day," screamed Clavering. "I'll make it payable at my banker's: I'll do any thing you like."
"Well, I was only chaffing you. I'll _give_ you twenty pound."
"You said a pony," interposed Clavering; "my dear fellow, you said a pony, and I'll be eternally obliged to you; and I'll not take it as a gift--only as a loan, and pay you back in six months. I take my oath I will."
"Well--well--there's the money, Sir Francis Clavering. I ain't a bad fellow. When I've money in my pocket, dammy, I spend it like a man. Here's five-and-twenty for you. Don't be losing it at the hells now. Don't be making a fool of yourself. Go down to Clavering Park, and it'll keep you ever so long. You needn't 'ave butchers' meat: there's pigs I dare say on the premises: and you can shoot rabbits for dinner, you know, every day till the game comes in. Besides, the neighbors will ask you about to dinner, you know, sometimes: for you _are_ a baronet, though you have outrun the constable. And you've got this comfort, that _I'm_ off your shoulders for a good bit to come--p'raps this two years--if I don't play; and I don't intend to touch the confounded black and red: and by that time my lady, as you call her-- Jimmy, I used to say--will have come round again; and you'll be ready for me, you know, and come down handsomely to yours truly."
At this juncture of their conversation Strong returned, nor did the baronet care much about prolonging the talk, having got the money: and he made his way from Shepherd's Inn, and went home and bullied his servant in a manner so unusually brisk and insolent, that the man concluded his master must have pawned some more of the house furniture, or at any rate, have come into possession of some ready money.