A looker-on would have imagined that he was about to dance a minuet with the lady, but he delicately took her fingers by the very tip and led her back to her seat, into which she meant to glide gracefully, but plumped down in a very feather-beddy way, and then blushed and frowned. "Oh, Mr Denville won't mind me; and him an old neighbour, too, as knows how I keep your books and everything. It isn't as if he was one of your wicked bucks, and bloods, and macaronies as they calls 'em." "Now, when you've done talking, woman, perhaps you'll let Denville speak." "Jo-si-ah!" exclaimed the lady, reddening, or to speak more correctly, growing more red, as she raised a large fan, which hung by a silken cord, and used it furiously. "Now then, Denville, what is it?" said Barclay, throwing himself back in his chair, and looking the extreme of vulgarity beside the visitor's refinement. "You'll pardon me, Mr Barclay?" said the MC, bowing. "Thanks. The fact is, my dear Barclay, the time has arrived when I must launch my son Morton upon the stream of the fashionable world." "Mean to marry him well?" said Barclay, smiling. "Exactly. Yes. You'll pardon me." He took snuff in a slow, deliberate, and studied mode that Mrs Barclay watched attentively, declaring afterwards that it was as good as a play, while her husband also took his pinch from his own box, but in a loud, rough, frill-browning way. "I have high hopes and admirable prospects opening out before him, my dear Barclay. Fortune seems to have marked him for her own, and to have begun to smile." "Fickle jade, sir; fickle jade." "At times--you'll pardon me. At times. Let us enjoy her smiles while we can. And now, my dear Barclay, that I wish to launch him handsomely and well--to add to his natural advantages the little touches of dress, a cane and snuff-box, and such trifles--I find, through the absence of so many fashionable visitors affecting my fees, I am troubled, inconvenienced for the want of a few guineas, and--er--it is very ridiculous--er--really I did not know whom to ask, till it occurred to me that you, my dear sir, would oblige me with, say, forty or fifty upon my note of hand." "Couldn't do it, sir. Haven't the money. Couldn't." "Don't talk such stuff, Jo-si-ah," exclaimed Mrs Barclay, fanning herself sharply, and making a sausage-like curl wabble to and fro, and her ribbons flutter. "You can if you like." "Woman!" he exclaimed furiously. "Oh, I don't mind you saying `woman,'" retorted the lady. "Telling such wicked fibs, and to an old neighbour too. If it had been that nasty, sneering, snickle dandy, Sir Harry Payne, or that big, pompous, dressed-up Sir Matthew Bray, you'd have lent them money directly. I'm ashamed of you." "Will you allow me to carry on my business in my own way, madam?"