“Very good. Then prove it. You bring me a letter from Bulstrode saying he doesn’t believe you’ve been cracking and promising to pay your debts out o’ my land, and then, if there’s any scrape you’ve got into, we’ll see if I can’t back you a bit. Come now! That’s a bargain. Here, give me your arm. I’ll try and walk round the room.”

Fred, in spite of his irritation, had kindness enough in him to be a little sorry for the unloved, unvenerated old man, who with his dropsical legs looked more than usually pitiable in walking. While giving his arm, he thought that he should not himself like to be an old fellow with his constitution breaking up; and he waited good-temperedly, first before the window to hear the wonted remarks about the guinea-fowls and the weathercock, and then before the scanty bookshelves, of which the chief glories in dark calf were Josephus, Culpepper, Klopstock’s Messiah , and several volumes of the Gentlemans Magazine .