‘Fine!—­to look on,’ Kilne assented.

‘Well, he was like a Marquis,’ said Barnes.

Here the three regarded each other, and laughed, though not loudly.  They instantly checked that unseemliness, and Kilne, as one who rises from the depths of a calculation with the sum in his head, spoke quite in a different voice: 

’Well, what do you say, gentlemen? shall we adjourn?  No use standing here.’

By the invitation to adjourn, it was well understood by the committee Kilne addressed, that they were invited to pass his threshold, and partake of a morning draught.  Barnes, the butcher, had no objection whatever, and if Grossby, a man of milder make, entertained any, the occasion and common interests to be discussed, advised him to waive them.  In single file these mourners entered the publican’s house, where Kilne, after summoning them from behind the bar, on the important question, what it should be? and receiving, first, perfect acquiescence in his views as to what it should be, and then feeble suggestions of the drink best befitting that early hour and the speaker’s particular constitution, poured out a toothful to each, and one to himself.

‘Here’s to him, poor fellow!’ said Kilne; and was deliberately echoed twice.

‘Now, it wasn’t that,’ Kilne pursued, pointing to the bottle in the midst of a smacking of lips, ’that wasn’t what got him into difficulties.  It was expensive luckshries.  It was being above his condition.  Horses!  What’s a tradesman got to do with horses?  Unless he’s retired!  Then he’s a gentleman, and can do as he likes.  It’s no use trying to be a gentleman if you can’t pay for it.  It always ends bad.  Why, there was he, consorting with gentlefolks—­gay as a lark!  Who has to pay for it?’

Kilne’s fellow-victims maintained a rather doleful tributary silence.

‘I’m not saying anything against him now,’ the publican further observed.  ’It ’s too late.  And there!  I’m sorry he’s gone, for one.  He was as kind a hearted a man as ever breathed.  And there! perhaps it was just as much my fault; I couldn’t say “No” to him,—­dash me, if I could!’

Lymport was a prosperous town, and in prosperity the much-despised British tradesman is not a harsh, he is really a well-disposed, easy soul, and requires but management, manner, occasional instalments—­just to freshen the account—­and a surety that he who debits is on the spot, to be a right royal king of credit.  Only the account must never drivel.  ‘Stare aut crescere’ appears to be his feeling on that point, and the departed Mr. Melchisedec undoubtedly understood him there; for the running on of the account looked deplorable and extraordinary now that Mr. Melchisedec was no longer in a position to run on with it, and it was precisely his doing so which had prevented it from being brought to a summary close long before.  Both Barnes, the butcher; and Grossby, the confectioner, confessed that they, too, found it hard ever to say ‘No’ to him, and, speaking broadly, never could.