“I have again fallen into jesting, mine old friend, which methinks between aged men who love each other, on grave matters, should not be. If thou art in serious strait I will help thee as heretofore and while I live, and no man save ourselves the wiser; but the spirit of a weakly man, born to poverty and grown up in the need of turning all around him to his selfish advantage, will assert itself within me; and I cannot bear to serve thee that I may lose thee. When thou lackest naught (it is the shopman who states his debt) thou dost never think of the poor shambling youth of Blackheath, whom thou didst lift, not only into horseback, but out of despair and heart-sickness by the contagion of thy health, courage, and kindliness; and to whom at the turning point of his fortunes (for despair was then setting in) thou didst give a ride worth far more than many hundreds of pounds a mile. Whereas, ‘when thy purse is empty, thou art ever prompt to remember Master Richard Whittington, some time lord mayor of London and always a rich merchant and housekeeper. This is the only charge thou wilt ever hear me bring against thee; for it is the only thing in which thou hast ever wronged me--and I meddle not with other men’s debts or claims; but when one justly owes me that which I deem he can pay, I will ever urge it, though he were my brother. “Dear, beloved, and, whatever the world may of thee (for I have the conceit that I look deeper into men’s natures than the thoughtless commonalty), honoured Sir John Falstaff, if money could win thee to be near me and mine--who love thee deservedly, and to whom thou hast never been aught but what is just and pure--thou shouldst have it from my well-stored coffers poured untold into thy pockets. But I have ever found it act as a spell that parts us. Remedy this if thou canst. Come and dwell with us--with all thine extravagancies and all thy retinue if thou wilt. Our cellars may perchance even hold out a year’s siege against the redoubtable Master Bardolph. All I stipulate is that thou shalt give me thy stalwart Jackanapes, Robin, to save from perdition, by placing him in the new school I am building; this for his own sake and more for that of two sober little kitchen-maidens of Mistress Alice’s, whom I should be loath to grow familiar with the kind of conversation I fear he must have picked up ere this in thine erratic progress. “Briefly, Jack, I will not send thee the money thou demandest. Come and ask for it, and Dame Alice and I (with the bantlings to hold on by thy skirts) will do our best to keep thee from going away till thou gettest it. “Thy friend, “Richard Whittington.”