NEDSERS What should I feel ashamed about?  Didn’t I do my best?  Blame the bla’gard who stole the money out of my pocket.  What old talk you have.  Didn’t I disgrace myself by goin’ into a pawnshop for you?

PATCHA
What am I to do at all!

DANNUX
’Tis a bad way to be in, surely.  But I think I can
see a way out of the difficulty.

NEDSERS Good old Wellington!  Good old Wellington!  That’s what your namesake said before he put the comether on Napoleon.  What say, Patcha?

PATCHA
Don’t be botherin’ me.  I’m more than disgusted with
you.

DANNUX Now, there must be no quarrelin’.  We are all friends and we must stand by, and help each other, because there is only the loan of ourselves in the world.  I have a job to go to, but I have no tools to work with.  And I haven’t a bit on my person that would be taken in the pawn, so I propose that Boulanger will give me his boots and that I will pawn them, and buy the tools I want.  Then I will go to work, and when the job, which will only take me a few hours, is finished, I’ll share the one pound one that his reverence said he’d give me.  And as he said himself, ’twas little enough, but as times were bad he couldn’t afford any more.

PATCHA
’Twas the Lord Himself that sent you in the door to
us!

NEDSERS Nothin’ could be fairer.  But look at my old boots, you wouldn’t get a lump of candy from a rag man for them.

PATCHA But why not give him your coat and vest?  You’d easily get eight or nine shillin’s on them and that much would buy the tools and get us all a bite to eat as well.

NEDSERS (taking off his coat and vest)
Enough said!  Enough said!

DANNUX (as he wraps them up in an old newspaper) I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d get ten shillin’s on them.  And sure they can be released again as soon as I get paid for the job.

NEDSERS That’s right, that’s the way I like to hear a man talkin’.

DANNUX (as he takes the laces from Patcha’s boots lying near the bed, and ties up the parcel) What else are we here for, but to be a help and a comfort to each other?  Sure ’tis by each other we live. (Places the parcel under his arm, puts on his hat and walks towards the door.  Looks from one to the other) Good-by, Napoleon—­Good-by, Boulanger.  May God bless you both.

PATCHA What’s that I hear?  Aren’t you comin’ back with the money and the bit to eat for us?

DANNUX
Of course I am.  I only mean good-by for the time
I’ll be away.

[Exit Dannux.  After he has gone Nedsers looks soberly at Patcha.

NEDSERS
Only for the time he’ll be away!

PATCHA
What’s the matter with you, at all?

NEDSERS
I think I did a foolish thing.

PATCHA
What’s that you’re sayin’, I say?

NEDSERS I did a foolish thing!  I know I did.  But that’s just like me.  I brought my dacent impulses from my mother.  God forgive her!