But come with me, my lad; there is a tavern hard by, and we may as well discuss matters over a pint of wine. You look cursed seedy, to be sure, but I can tell Bill the waiter – famous fellow, that Bill! – that you are one of my tenants, come to complain of my steward, who has just distrained you for rent, you dog! – No wonder you look so worn in the rigging. Come follow me. I can’t walk with thee. It would look too like Northumberland House and the butcher’s abode next door taking a stroll together.’

‘Really, Mr Pepper,’ said our hero, colouring, and by no means pleased with the ingenious comparison of his friend, ‘if you are ashamed of my clothes, which I own might be newer, I will not wound you with my –’

‘Pooh! my lad – pooh!’ cried Long Ned, interrupting him, ‘never take offence. I never do. I never take anything but money, – except, indeed, watches. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings; – all of us have been poor once. ’Gad, I remember when I had not a dud to my back, and now, you see me – you see me, Paul! But come, ’tis only through the streets you need separate from me. Keep a little behind – very little – that will do. – Ay, that will do,’ repeated Long Ned, mutteringly to himself, ‘they’ll take him for a bailiff. It looks handsome nowadays to be so attended. It shows one had credit once!’

Meanwhile Paul, though by no means pleased with the contempt expressed for his personal appearance by his lengthy associate, and impressed with a keener sense than ever of the crimes of his coat and the vices of his other garment – ‘O breathe not its name!’ – followed doggedly and sullenly the strutting steps of the coxcombical Mr Pepper. That personage arrived at last at a small tavern, and, arresting a waiter who was running across the passage into the coffee-room with a dish of hung-beef, demanded (no doubt from a pleasing anticipation of a similar pendulous catastrophe) a plate of the same excellent cheer, to be carried, in company with a bottle of port, into a private apartment. No sooner did he find himself alone with Paul, than, bursting into a loud laugh, Mr Ned surveyed his comrade from head to foot through an eye-glass which he wore fastened to his button-hole by a piece of blue riband.

‘Well – ’gad now,’ said he, stopping ever and anon, as if to laugh the more heartily – ‘stab my vitals, but you are a comical quiz; I wonder what the women would say, if they saw the dashing Edward Pepper, Esquire, walking arm in arm with thee at Ranelagh or Vauxhall? Nay, man, never be downcast; if I laugh at thee, it is only to make thee look a little merrier thyself. Why, thou lookest like a book of my grandfather’s called Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy; and faith, a shabbier bound copy of it I never saw.’

‘These jests are a little hard,’ said Paul, struggling between anger and an attempt to smile; and then recollecting his late literary occupations, and the many extracts he had taken from Gleanings of the Belles Lettres, in order to impart elegance to his criticisms, he threw out his hand theatrically, and spouted with a solemn face –

           ‘Of all the griefs that harass the distrest,

           Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest!’

‘Well now, prithee forgive me,’ said Long Ned, composing his features; ‘and just tell me what you have been doing the last two months.’

‘Slashing and plastering!’ said Paul, with conscious pride.

‘Slashing and what! The boy’s mad, – what do you mean, Paul?’

‘In other words,’ said our hero, speaking very slowly, ‘know, O very Long Ned! that I have been critic to the Asinæum.’

If Paul’s comrade laughed at first, he now laughed ten times more merrily than ever. He threw his length of limb upon a neighbouring sofa, and literally rolled with cachinnatory convulsions; nor did his risible emotions subside until the entrance of the hung-beef restored him to recollection. Seeing, then, that a cloud lowered over Paul’s countenance, he went up to him, with something like gravity; begged his pardon for his want of politeness; and desired him to wash away all unkindness in a bumper of port. Paul, whose excellent dispositions we have before had occasion to remark, was not impervious to his friend’s apologies. He assured Long Ned, that he quite forgave him for his ridicule of the high situation he (Paul) had enjoyed in the literary world; that it was the duty of a public censor to bear no malice; and that he should be very glad to take his share in the interment of the hung-beef.

The pair now sat down to their repast, and Paul, who had fared but meagrely in that Temple of Athena over which Mac Grawler presided, did ample justice to the viands before him. By degrees, as he ate and drank, his heart opened to his companion; and, laying aside that Asinæum dignity which he had at first thought it incumbent on him to assume, he entertained Pepper with all the particulars of the life he had lately passed. He narrated to him his breach with Dame Lobkins; his agreement with Mac Grawler; the glory he had acquired, and the wrongs he had sustained; and he concluded, as now the second bottle made its appearance, by stating his desire of exchanging, for some more active profession, that sedentary career which he had so promisingly begun.

This last part of Paul’s confessions secretly delighted the soul of Long Ned; for that experienced collector of the highways – (Ned, was, indeed, of no less noble a profession) – had long fixed an eye upon our hero, as one whom he thought likely to be an honour to that enterprising calling which he espoused, and an useful assistant to himself. He had not, in his earlier acquaintance with Paul, when the youth was under the roof and the surveillance of the practised and wary Mrs Lobkins, deemed it prudent to expose the exact nature of his own pursuits, and had contented himself by gradually ripening the mind and the finances of Paul into that state when the proposition of a leap from a hedge would not be likely greatly to revolt the person to whom it was made. He now thought that time near at hand: and, filling our hero’s glass up to the brim, thus artfully addressed him: –

‘Courage, my friend! – Your narration has given me a sensible pleasure; for, curse me if it has not strengthened my favourite opinion, – that everything is for the best. If it had not been for the meanness of that pitiful fellow, Mac Grawler, you might still be inspired with the paltry ambition of earning a few shillings a-week, and vilifying a parcel of poor devils in the what-d’ye-call-it, with a hard name; whereas now, my good Paul, I trust I shall be able to open to your genius a new career, in which guineas are had for the asking, – in which you may wear fine clothes, and ogle the ladies at Ranelagh: and when you are tired of glory and liberty, Paul, why you have only to make your bow to an heiress, or a widow with a spanking jointure, and quit the hum of men like a Cincinnatus!’

Though Paul’s perception into the abstruser branches of morals was not very acute, – and at that time the port wine had considerably confused the few notions he possessed upon ‘the beauty of virtue,’ – yet he could not but perceive that Mr Pepper’s insinuated proposition was far from being one which the bench of bishops, or a synod of moralists, would conscientiously have approved: he consequently remained silent; and Long Ned, after a pause, continued –

‘You know my genealogy, my good fellow? – I was the son of Lawyer Pepper, a shrewd old dog, but as hot as Calcutta; and the grandson of Sexton Pepper, a great author, who wrote verses on tombstones, and kept a stall of religious tracts in Carlisle. My grandfather, the sexton, was the best temper of the family; for all of us are a little inclined to be hot in the mouth. Well, my fine fellow, my father left me his blessing, and this devilish good head of hair. I lived for some years on my own resources. I found it a particularly inconvenient mode of life, and of late I have taken to live on the public. My father and grandfather did it before me, though in a different line. ’Tis the pleasantest plan in the world. Follow my example, and your coat shall be as spruce as my own. – Master Paul, your health!’

‘But, O longest of mortals!’ said Paul, refilling his glass, ‘though the public may allow you to eat your mutton off their backs for a short time, they will kick up at last, and upset you and your banquet: in other words, – (pardon my metaphor, dear Ned, in remembrance of the part I have lately maintained in the Asinæum, that most magnificent and metaphorical of journals!) – in other words, the police will nab thee at last; and thou wilt have the distinguished fate, as thou already hast the distinguishing characteristic – of Absalom!’

‘You mean that I shall be hanged,’ said Long Ned. ‘That may or may not be; but he who fears death never enjoys life.