Messrs. Lazarus and Sons were merchants who perfectly understood their business, and, though they started difficulties, were only too happy to get fresh birds into their net. They knew to a certainty that the sum they were asked to advance would not be repaid at the end of the prescribed three months: it would scarcely have been worth their while to enter into the matter if it had; the profit on the hundred pounds’ worth of jewellery, which Ensign Spoonbill was required to take as part of the amount, would not have remunerated them sufficiently. Guessing pretty accurately which way the money would go, they foresaw renewed applications, and a long perspective of accumulating acceptances. Lord Pelican might be a needy nobleman; but he _was_ Lord Pelican, and the Honourable George Spoonbill was his son; and if the latter did not succeed to the title and family estates, which was by no means improbable, there was Lady Pelican’s settlement for division amongst the younger children. So they advanced the money; that is to say, they produced a hundred and eighty pounds in cash, twenty they took for the accommodation (half of which found its way into the pocket of—never mind, we won’t say anything about Captain Cushion’s private affairs), and the value of the remaining hundred was made up with a series of pins and rings of the most stunning magnificence. This was the Honourable Ensign Spoonbill’s first bill-transaction, but, the ice once broken, the second and third soon followed. He found it the pleasantest way in the world of raising money, and in a short time his affairs took a turn so decidedly commercial, that he applied the system to all his mercantile transactions. He paid his tailors after this fashion, satisfied Messrs. Mildew and his upholsterers with negotiable paper, and did “bits of stiff” with Galloper, the horse-dealer, to a very considerable figure. He even became facetious, not to say inspired, by this great discovery; for, amongst his papers, when they were afterwards overhauled by the official assignee—or some such fiscal dignitary,—a bacchanalian song in manuscript was found, supposed to have been written about this period, the _refrain_ of which ran as follows:— “When creditors clamour, and cash fails the till, There is nothing so easy as giving a bill.”