all by myself and helpless here. I should wish Mehalah to be here before Admonition and her beau return. They won't be back till late. There's a horsemanship at Colchester as well as a merry-go-round, and they are going to both, and perhaps to the theatre after that. There'll be junketings and racketings, and I—poor I—left here with no one to attend to me, and my crutches at the mast-head. You will tell the girl and her mother that I expect their help, and I will be a man, that I will. It would be something to boast of, would it not, if Timothy were to return and find his room occupied and his baggage picked to rags, and if Admonition were to discover that I have cousins as well as she?"
"You are bent on this?"
"I rely on you. You will see them and tell them to come to me, and I will provide for them whilst I am alive, and afterwards—when I am no more—we won't talk or think of such an eventuality. It isn't pleasant to contemplate, and may not happen for many years. I am not so old as you might think. My infirmity is due to accident; and my digestion is, or rather was, first-rate. I could eat and drink anything before I was married. Now I am condemned to see others eat and drink what I have laid in for my own consumption, and I am put off with the drumstick of the fowl, or the poorest swipes of ale, whilst the others toss off my stout—bottled stout. I will not endure this any longer. Tell that girl—I forget her name—and her mother that they must come to me."
"But suppose they will not come."
"They will, I know they will. The female heart is tender and sympathetic, and compassionates misery. My suffering will induce them to come. If that will not, why then the prospects of being comfortably off and free from cares will make them come. I have plenty of money. I won't tell you, I have not told Admonition, how much. I have money in the Colchester Bank. I have South Sea shares, and insurances, and mortgages, and I shall not let Admonition have more money than I can help, as it all goes on cousin Timothy, and whirligigs and horsemanships, or regattas, and red ribands, and what not; none is spent on me. No, no. The Sharlands shall have my money. They
