The Adventures of Harry Richmond — CompleteMeredith, George
General
The Adventures of Harry Richmond — Complete
Meredith, George
Adventure and adventurers -- Fiction
These were the respective names given by him to the empty purse and the
full purse. We vowed we preferred the poet.
'Ay,' said he, 'but for all that the alderman is lighter on his feet: I
back him to be across the Channel first. The object of my instructions
to you will be lost, Richie, if I find you despising the Alderman's
Pegasus. On money you mount. We are literally chained here, you know,
there is no doubt about it; and we are adding a nail to our fetters
daily. True, you are accomplishing the Parisian accent. Paris has also
this immense advantage over all other cities: 'tis the central hotel on
the high-road of civilization. In Paris you meet your friends to a
certainty; it catches them every one in turn; so now we must abroad
early and late, and cut for trumps.' A meeting with a friend of my
father, Mr. Monterez Williams, was the result of our resolute adoption
of this system. He helped us on to Boulogne, where my father met
another friend, to whom he gave so sumptuous a dinner that we had not
money enough to pay the hotel bill.
'Now observe the inconvenience of leaving Paris,' said he. 'Ten to one
we shall have to return. We will try a week's whistling on the jetty;
and if no luck comes, and you will admit, Richie—Mr. Temple, I call
your attention to it—that luck will scarcely come in profuse expedition
through the narrow neck of a solitary seaport, why, we must return to
Paris.'
I proposed to write to my aunt Dorothy for money, but he would not hear
of that. After two or three days of whistling, I saw my old friend, Mr.
Bannerbridge, step out of the packetboat. On condition of my writing to
my aunt to say that I was coming home, he advanced me the sum we were
in need of, grudgingly though, and with the prediction that we should
break down again, which was verified. It occurred only a stage from
Riversley, where my grandfather's name was good as coin of the realm.
Besides, my father remained at the inn to guarantee the payment of the
bill, while Temple and I pushed on in a fly with the two dozen of Hock.
It could hardly be called a break-down, but my father was not unwilling
for me to regard it in that light. Among his parting remarks was an
impressive adjuration to me to cultivate the squire's attachment at all
costs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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