"For those who have nothing," said he, "it is much. Hereafter, you may
assist them again. Go but and see their distresses, and you will wish
to give them every thing."

Mr Briggs now, when actually between her fingers he saw the half
guinea, could contain no longer; he twitched the sleeve of her gown,
and pinching her arm, with a look of painful eagerness, said in a
whisper "Don't give it! don't let him have it! chouse him, chouse him!
nothing but an old bite!"

"Pardon me, Sir," said Cecilia, in a low voice, "his character is very
well known to me." And then, disengaging her arm from him, she
presented her little offering.

At this sight, Mr Briggs was almost outrageous, and losing in his
wrath, all fear of the stranger, he burst forth with fury into the
following outcries, "Be ruined! see it plainly; be fleeced! be stript!
be robbed! won't have a gown to your back! won't have a shoe to your
foot! won't have a rag in the world! be a beggar in the street! come to
the parish! rot in a jail!--half a guinea at a time!--enough to break
the Great Mogul!"

"Inhuman spirit of selfish parsimony!" exclaimed Albany, "repinest thou
at this loan, given from thousands to those who have worse than
nothing? who pay to-day in hunger for bread they borrowed yesterday
from pity? who to save themselves from the deadly pangs of famine,
solicit but what the rich know not when they possess, and miss not when
they give?"

"Anan!" cried Briggs, recovering his temper from the perplexity of his