“We never wasted none of it, not half a groat, Sir. We finished out the cellar at the Hooked Cod first; and when Mother Precious made a grumble of it, we gave her the money for to fill it up again, upon the understanding to come back when it was ready; and then we went to Burlington, and spent the rest in poshays like two gentlemen; and when we was down upon our stumps at last, for only one leg there is between us both, your honor, my boy he ups and makes a rummage in his traps; which the Lord he put it into his mind to do so, when he were gone a few good sheets in the wind; and there sure enough he finds five good guineas in the tail of an old hankercher he had clean forgotten; and he says, 'Now, father, you take care of them. Let us go and see the capital, and that good gentleman, as you have picked up a bit of news for.' So we shaped a course for York, on board the schooner Mary Anne, and from Goole in a barge as far as this here bridge; and here we are, high and dry, your honor. I was half a mind to bring in my boy Bob; but he saith, 'Not without the old chap axes;' and being such a noisy one, I took him at his word; though he hath found out what there was to find--not me.” “How noble a thing is parental love!” cried the general factor, in his hard, short way, which made many people trust him, because it was unpleasant; “and filial duty of unfathomable grog! Worthy Joseph, let your narrative proceed.” “They big words is beyond me, Sir. What use is any man to talk over a chap's head?” “Then, dash your eyes, go on, Joe. Can you understand that, now?” “Yes, Sir, I can, and I likes a thing put sensible. If the gentlemen would always speak like that, there need be no difference atween us. Well, it was all along of all that money-bag of Bob's that he and I found out anything. What good were your guinea? Who could stand treat on that more than a night or two, and the right man never near you? But when you keep a good shop open for a month, as Bob and me did with Widow Tapsy, it standeth to reason that you must have everybody, to be called at all respectable, for miles and miles around. For the first few nights or so some on 'em holds off--for an old chalk against them, or for doubt of what is forrard, or for cowardliness of their wives, or things they may have sworn to stop, or other bad manners. But only go on a little longer, and let them see that you don't care, and send everybody home a-singing through the lanes as merry as a voting-time for Parliament, and the outer ones begins to shake their heads, and to say that they are bound to go, and stop the racket of it. And so you get them all, your honor, saints as well as sinners, if you only keeps the tap turned long enough.” “Your reasoning is ingenious, Joseph, and shows a deep knowledge of human nature. But who was this tardy saint that came at last for grog?”