Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/34

14 breaking its shins. Did he get anything out of you?"

"I am sorry to say he did," sighed Mr. Verdant Green, with a retrospective glance at his past conduct. "He talked to me so much about my Derby book, and joining him in the sweep, and other things which I could not properly understand—and he put it to me in so many ways about the great advantages that I should secure by backing The Knight at long odds,—I think that was his expression—that, at last, when he asked me if I could oblige him with change for a five-pound note"—

"I 'm interrupting you," said little Mr. Bouncer; "but, did you see that five-pound note, Giglamps?"

"No; I did not."

"If you had, you would have seen what his creditors have not yet been privileged to witness, much less to handle," observed Mr. Bouncer. "Well, young 'un, go ahead!"

"And I told him that I could not change him the note; for, curiously enough, I myself wanted change for a five-pound note; my papa—I mean, my Governor—having, that morning, sent me, in a letter, three five-pound notes. And, when Blucher Boots asked if I had got the notes with me, I said 'Oh, yes!' and pulled them out of my pocket-book. And he said that they had been sent most opportunely, and that I could n't do better than to let him lay them out for me; and that they would bring me in ever so much more. And he, in fact—that is to say," stammered Mr. Verdant Green, as he somewhat hesitated to make a full disclosure of the truth, even to his friend—"in short—I—at last I handed them to him."