"Has got the ready?" cried Mr Briggs, impatiently; "can cast an
account? that's the point; can come down handsomely? eh?"

"Why as to that, Sir, I'm not bound to speak to a gentleman's private
affairs. What's my own, is my own, and what is another person's, is
another person's; that's my way of arguing, and that's what I call
talking to the purpose."

"Dare say he's a rogue! don't have him, chick. Bet a wager i'n't worth
two shillings; and that will go for powder and pomatum; hate a
plaistered pate; commonly a numscull: love a good bob-jerom."

"Why this is talking quite wide of the mark," said Mr Hobson, "to
suppose a young lady of fortunes would marry a man with a bob-jerom.
What I say is, let every body follow their nature; that's the way to be
comfortable; and then if they pay every one his own, who's a right to
call 'em to account, whether they wear a bob-jerom, or a pig-tail down
to the calves of their legs?"

"Ay, ay," cried Briggs, sneeringly, "or whether they stuff their
gullets with hot rounds of toast and butter."

"And what if they do, Sir?" returned Hobson, a little angrily; "when a
man's got above the world, where's the harm of living a little genteel?
as to a round of toast and butter, and a few oysters, fresh opened, by
way of a damper before dinner, no man need be ashamed of them, provided
he pays as he goes: and as to living upon water-gruel, and scrubbing
one's flesh with sand, one might as well be a galley-slave at once.
You don't understand life, Sir, I see that."