up at any price; or it will be the death of my father. This is a case for money, just as I thought it would be. Mr. and Miss Shopkeeper have got a large assortment of silence to sell; and we must buy it of them, over the domestic counter, at so much a yard. Have you been there yet, Basil, to ask the price and strike the bargain?”
“I was at the house, yesterday.”
“The deuce you were! And who did you see?—The father? Did you bring him to terms? did you do business with Mr. Shopkeeper?”
“His manner was brutal: his language, the language of a bully—?”
“So much the better. Those men are easiest dealt with: if he will only fly into a passion with me, I engage for success beforehand. But the end—how did it end?”
“As it began:—in threats on his part, in endurance on mine.”
“Ah! we’ll see how he likes my endurance next: he’ll find it rather a different sort of endurance from yours. By the by, Basil, what money had you to offer him?”
“I made no offer to him then. Circumstances happened which rendered me incapable of thinking of it. I intended to go there again, today; and if money would bribe him to silence, and save my family from sharing the dishonour which has fallen on me , to abandon to him the only money I have of my own—the little income left me by our mother.”
“Do you mean to say that your only resource is in that wretched trifle, and that you ever really intend to let it go, and start in the world without a rap? Do you mean to say that my father gave you up without making the smallest provision for you, in such a mess as yours? Hang it! do him justice. He has been hard enough on you, I know; but he can’t have coolly turned you over to ruin in that way.”