“And if it were, it could scarce be more pat,” I retorted. “’Tis Poor Richard’s maxim.”

“O lud!  O my soul!” cries Tom, with a hiccup and a snigger; “’tis time you made another grand tour, Courtenay.  Here’s the second Whig has got in on you within the week!”

“Thank God they have not got me down to osnabrig and bumbo yet,” replies the doctor.  Coming over to me by the fire, he tapped my sleeve and added in a low tone:  “Forbearance with such a pair of asses is enough to make a man shed bitter tears.  But a little of it is necessary to keep out of debt.  You and I will play together, against both the lambs, Richard.  One of them is not far from maudlin now.”

“Thank you, doctor,” I answered politely, “but I have a better way to make my living.”  In three years I had learned a little to control my temper.

He shrugged his thin shoulders.  “Eh bien, mon bon,” says he, “I dare swear you know your own game better than do I.”  And he cast a look up the stairs, of which I quite missed the meaning.  Indeed, I was wholly indifferent.  The doctor and his like had passed out of my life, and I believed they were soon to disappear from our Western Hemisphere.  The report I had heard was now confirmed, that his fortune was dissipated, and that he lived entirely off these young rakes who aspired to be macaronies.

“Since your factor is become a damned Lutheran, Tom,” said he, returning to the table and stripping a pack, “it will have to be picquet.  You promised me we could count on a fourth, or I had never left Inman’s.”

It was Tom, as I had feared, who sat down unsteadily opposite.  Philip lounged and watched them sulkily, snuffing and wheezing and dipping into the bowl, and cursing the house for a draughty barn.  I took a pipe on the settle to see what would come of it.  I was not surprised that Courtenay lost at first, and that Tom drank the most of the punch.  Nor was it above half an hour before the stakes were raised and the tide began to turn in the doctor’s favour.

“A plague of you, Courtenay!” cries Mr. Tom, at length, flinging down the cards.  His voice was thick, while the Selwyn of Annapolis was never soberer in his life.  Tom appealed first to Philip for the twenty pounds he owed him.

“You know how damned stingy my father is, curse you,” whined my cousin, in return.  “I told you I should not have it till the first of the month.”

Tom swore back.  He thrust his hands deep in his pockets and sank into that attitude of dejection common to drunkards.  Suddenly he pulled himself up.

“‘Shblood!  Here’s Richard t’ draw from.  Lemme have fifty pounds, Richard.”

“Not a farthing,” I said, unmoved.

“You say wha’ shall be done with my father’s money!” he cried.  “I call tha’ damned cool—­Gad’s life!  I do.  Eh, Courtenay?”

Courtenay had the sense not to interfere.

“I’ll have you dishcharged, Gads death! so I will!” he shouted.  “No damned airs wi’ me, Mr. Carvel.  I’ll have you know you’re not wha’ you once were, but, only a cursht oversheer.”