Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/147

Rh my good fellow, go! scribble again and for ever for Mac Grawler, and let him live upon thy brains, instead of suffering thy brains to"

"Hold!" cried Paul. "Although I may have some scruples which prevent my adoption of that rising line of life you have proposed to me, yet you are very much mistaken if you imagine me so spiritless, as any longer to subject myself to the frauds of that rascal Mac Grawler. No! My present intention is to pay my old nurse a visit. It appears to me passing strange, that though I have left her so many weeks, she has never relented enough to track me out, which one would think would have been no difficult matter: and now you see that I am pretty well off, having five guineas and four shillings, all my own, and she can scarcely think I want her money; my heart melts to her, and I shall go and ask pardon for my haste!"

"Pshaw! sentimental," cried Long Ned, a little alarmed at the thought of Paul's gliding from those clutches which he thought had now so firmly closed upon him. "Why, you surely don't mean, after having once tasted the joys of independence, to go back to the boozing ken, and