“What more is there to say?” I cried.  “You don’t want to keep me here for a needless humiliation?”

“Look here, Dodd, you must try and command your temper,” said he.  “This interview is of your own seeking, and not mine; if you suppose it’s not disagreeable to me, you’re wrong; and if you think I will give you money without knowing thoroughly about your prospects, you take me for a fool.  Besides,” he added, “if you come to look at it, you’ve got over the worst of it by now:  you have done the asking, and you have every reason to know I mean to refuse.  I hold out no false hopes, but it may be worth your while to let me judge.”

Thus—­I was going to say—­encouraged, I stumbled through my story; told him I had credit at the cabman’s eating-house, but began to think it was drawing to a close; how Dijon lent me a corner of his studio, where I tried to model ornaments, figures for clocks, Time with the scythe, Leda and the swan, musketeers for candlesticks, and other kickshaws, which had never (up to that day) been honoured with the least approval.

“And your room?” asked Myner.

“O, my room is all right, I think,” said I.  “She is a very good old lady, and has never even mentioned her bill.”

“Because she is a very good old lady, I don’t see why she should be fined,” observed Myner.

“What do you mean by that?” I cried.

“I mean this,” said he.  “The French give a great deal of credit amongst themselves; they find it pays on the whole, or the system would hardly be continued; but I can’t see where we come in; I can’t see that it’s honest of us Anglo-Saxons to profit by their easy ways, and then skip over the Channel or (as you Yankees do) across the Atlantic.”

“But I’m not proposing to skip,” I objected.

“Exactly,” he replied.  “And shouldn’t you?  There’s the problem.  You seem to me to have a lack of sympathy for the proprietors of cabmen’s eating-houses.  By your own account you’re not getting on:  the longer you stay, it’ll only be the more out of the pocket of the dear old lady at your lodgings.  Now, I’ll tell you what I’ll do:  if you consent to go, I’ll pay your passage to New York, and your railway fare and expenses to Muskegon (if I have the name right) where your father lived, where he must have left friends, and where, no doubt, you’ll find an opening.  I don’t seek any gratitude, for of course you’ll think me a beast; but I do ask you to pay it back when you are able.  At any rate, that’s all I can do.  It might be different if I thought you a genius, Dodd; but I don’t, and I advise you not to.”

“I think that was uncalled for, at least,” said I.

“I daresay it was,” he returned, with the same steadiness.  “It seemed to me pertinent; and, besides, when you ask me for money upon no security, you treat me with the liberty of a friend, and it’s to be presumed that I can do the like.  But the point is, do you accept?”