twice for a gentleman like
you! Ha, ha, ha! it's like making three bites of a cherry!"

"How much?" said Richard.

"Total, hundred and eighty-three--five--six, with the stamps, sir," said
the tailor, producing three slips of blue paper.

"My cousin said he owed you only about eighty pounds!" cried Richard.

"For clothes, sir," said the tailor, with a deprecating smile. "The
hundred was the cash advanced to oblige you, sir, as a gentleman."

"What!"

"The hundred I advanced for you two, Sir Richard."

"For us two? My good fellow, I had none of the money."

"Oh, sir, don't say that!" cried the tailor, reproachfully. "Of course,
I know that gents wants a little money extry sometimes, and that it's a
tradesman's dooty to help and oblige a customer if he can; and I did."

"But--but--"

"Don't, sir; please don't--you hurt me! I respect Mr Mark Frayne very
much; but you can't know him without seeing as he's a bit too free with
his money, and I should never have dreamed of letting him have it if it
hadn't been for you, sir."

"It was not for me!" cried Richard, who was regularly roused and
indignant now. "I have nothing whatever to do with my cousin's debts."

"Oh, sir, please don't! I have not come for the money now, though it
would be very convenient, for wholesale houses objects to waiting.
There you are, you see! You have only to sign the three bits of paper,
and there'll be no more trouble for you at all."

"But, look here," cried Richard, angrily, "you are insinuating that I
received part of this money!"

"Wouldn't it be better, Sir Richard, to say no more about it?" said the
tailor. "Money is money, sir; gold's gold; and, as for silver, why it's
quicksilver, ain't it, now? Of course, I know what young gents is, as I
said before; and I don't want to make any trouble about it."

"But listen," said Richard, trying to be quite calm and cool. "Do I
understand you aright?"

"Oh, yes, sir; I'm right about money."

"That I shared the borrowed money?"

"Why, sir," said the man with a smile, "you don't suppose I should have
lent it to Mr Mark Frayne, whose father's only a poor parson? Not me!"

"Then you lent it to him because you believed I was to have part?"

"I lent it to you, sir, because I knew you was a barrynet, and would
come in for your money in three or four years' time, and, of course, to
oblige you--being short."

"But--"

"For I says to myself, `There's the money a-doing nothing