Page:Surprizing adventures, of Jack Oakum, & Tom Splicewell.pdf/24

24 is your acquaintance, and has a more than common volubility of appetite, I shall esteem it as a favour, if you'll take an opportunity, by-and-by, of speaking to him for me, that I hope he'll be so kind as to consider me something more than the common price of my ordinary, for, upon my word, sir, he has obliged me to dress a fresh dinner for my own family, or they must have gone without victuals.—Lord, sir, replies the gentleman, I'd do it with all my heart, but I know it will signify nothing, for it might have happened, you know, that he had not eaten a morsel, and it is no easy matter, you know, landlord, for a person to break through an established custom. This answer confounded the landlord in an instant, and convinced him that this was only a bill due to him, which they had thus contrived to pay off in his own coin.