Indeed, it often occurred to him to leave her house altogether, and seek his fortunes alone, after the manner of the ingenious Gil Blas, or the enterprising Roderick Random; and this idea, though conquered and reconquered, gradually swelled and increased at his heart, even as swelleth that hairy ball found in the stomach of some suffering heifer after its decease. Among these projects of enterprise, the reader will hereafter notice, that an early vision of the Green Forest Cave, in which Turpin was accustomed, with a friend, a ham, and a wife, to conceal himself, flitted across his mind. At this time he did not, perhaps, incline to the mode of life practised by the hero of the roads; but he certainly clung not the less fondly to the notion of the cave.

The melancholy flow of our hero’s life was now, however, about to be diverted by an unexpected turn, and the crude thoughts of boyhood to burst, ‘like Ghilan’s Giant Palm,’ into the fruit of a manly resolution.

Among the prominent features of Mrs Lobkins’s mind was a sovereign contempt for the unsuccessful; – the imprudence and ill-luck of Paul occasioned her as much scorn as compassion. And when, for the third time within a week, he stood, with a rueful visage and with vacant pockets, by the dame’s great chair, requesting an additional supply, the tides of her wrath swelled into overflow.

‘Look you, my kinchin cove,’ said she, – and in order to give peculiar dignity to her aspect, she put on while she spoke a huge pair of tin spectacles, – ‘if so be as how you goes for to think as how I shall go for to supply your wicious necessities, you will find yourself planted in Queer Street. Blow me tight, if I gives you another mag.’

‘But I owe Long Ned a guinea,’ said Paul, ‘and Dummie Dunnaker lent me three crowns. It ill becomes your heir apparent, my dear dame, to fight shy of his debts of honour.’

‘Taradididdle, don’t think for to wheedle me with your debts and your honour,’ said the dame in a passion. ‘Long Ned is as Long in the forks* as he is in the back: may Old Harry fly off with him! And as for Dummie Dunnaker, I wonders how you, brought up such a swell, and blest with the wery best of hedications, can think of putting up with such wulgar sociates! I tells you what, Paul, you’ll please to break with them, smack and at once, or devil a brad you’ll ever get from Peg Lobkins.’ So saying, the old lady turned round in her chair, and helped herself to a pipe of tobacco.

Paul walked twice up and down the apartment, and at last stopped opposite the dame’s chair: he was a youth of high spirit, and though he was warm-hearted, and had a love for Mrs Lobkins, which her care and affection for him well deserved, yet he was rough in temper, and not constantly smooth in speech: it is true that his heart smote him afterwards, whenever he had said any thing to annoy Mrs Lobkins: and he was always the first to seek a reconciliation; but warm words produce cold respect, and sorrow for the past is not always efficacious in amending the future. Paul then, puffed up with the vanity of his genteel education, and the friendship of Long Ned (who went to Ranelagh, and wore silver clocked stockings), stopped opposite to Mrs Lobkins’s chair, and said with great solemnity, –

‘Mr Pepper, madam, says very properly that I must have money to support myself like a gentleman: and as you won’t give it me, I am determined, with many thanks for your past favours, to throw myself on the world, and seek my fortune.’

If Paul was of no oily and bland temper, dame Margaret Lobkins, it has been seen, had no advantage on that score: – we dare say the reader has observed that nothing so enrages persons on whom one depends as any expressed determination of seeking independence. Gazing, therefore, for one moment at the open but resolute countenance of Paul, while all the blood of her veins seemed gathering in fire and scarlet to her enlarging cheeks, Dame Lobkins said –

‘Ifeaks, Master Pride-in-duds! Seek your fortune yourself, will you? This comes of my bringing you up, and letting you eat the bread of idleness and charity, you toad of a thousand! Take that and be d—d to you!’ and, suiting the action to the word, the tube which she had withdrawn from her mouth, in order to utter her gentle rebuke, whizzed through the air, grazed Paul’s cheek, and finished its earthly career by coming in violent contact with the right eye of Dummie Dunnaker, who at that exact moment entered the room.

Paul had winced for a moment to avoid the missive, – in the next he stood perfectly upright; his cheeks glowed, his chest swelled; and the entrance of Dummie Dunnaker who was thus made the spectator of the affront he had received, stirred his blood into a deeper anger and a more bitter self-humiliation: – all his former resolutions of departure – all the hard words, the coarse allusions, the practical insults he had at any time received, rushed upon him at once. He merely cast one look at the old woman, whose rage was now half subsided, and turned slowly and in silence to the door.

There is often something alarming in an occurrence, merely because it is that which we least expect: the astute Mrs Lobkins, remembering the hardy temper and fiery passions of Paul, had expected some burst of rage, some vehement reply; and when she caught with one wandering eye his parting look, and saw him turn so passively and mutely to the door, her heart misgave her, she raised herself from her chair, and made towards him. Unhappily for her chance of reconciliation, she had that day quaffed more copiously of the bowl than usual, and the signs of intoxication visible in her uncertain gait, her meaningless eye, her vacant leer, her ruby cheek, all inspired Paul with feelings which, at the moment converted resentment into something very much like aversion. He sprang from her grasp to the threshold. ‘Where be you going, you imp of the world?’ cried the dame. ‘Get in with you, and say no more on the matter: be a bob-cull – drop the bullies, and you shall have the blunt!’

But Paul heeded not this invitation.

‘I will eat the bread of idleness and charity no longer,’ said he, sullenly. ‘Good by, – and if ever I can pay you what I have cost you, I will.’

He turned away as he spoke; and the dame kindling with resentment at his unseemly return to her proffered kindness, hallooed after him, and bade that dark-coloured gentleman who keeps the fire-office below, go along with him.

Swelling with anger, pride, shame, and a half-joyous feeling of emancipated independence, Paul walked on he knew not whither, with his head in the air, and his legs marshalling themselves into a military gait of defiance. He had not proceeded far, before he heard his name uttered behind him, – he turned, and saw the rueful face of Dummie Dunnaker.

Very inoffensively had that respectable person been employed during the last part of the scene we have described, in caressing his afflicted eye, and muttering philosophical observations on the danger incurred by all those who are acquainted with ladies of a choleric temperament: when Mrs Lobkins, turning round after Paul’s departure, and seeing the pitiful person of that Dummie Dunnaker, whose name she remembered Paul had mentioned in his opening speech, and whom, therefore, with an illogical confusion of ideas, she considered a party in the late dispute, exhausted upon him all that rage which it was necessary for her comfort that she should unburden somewhere.

She seized the little man by the collar – the tenderest of all places in gentlemen similarly circumstanced with regard to the ways of life, and giving him a blow, which took effect on his other and hitherto undamaged eye, cried out, ‘I’ll teach you, you blood-sucker, to spunge upon those as has expectations! I’ll teach you to cozen the heir of the Mug, you snivelling, whey-faced ghost of a farthing rush-light! What! You’ll lend my Paul three crowns, will you, when you knows as how you told me you could not pay me a pitiful tizzy? Oh, you’re a queer one, I warrants; but you won’t queer Margery Lobkins. Out of my ken, you cur of the mange! – out of my ken; and if ever I claps my sees on you again, or if ever I know as how you makes a flat of my Paul, blow me tight, but I’ll weave you a hempen collar: I’ll hang you, you dog, I will. What! You will answer me, will you? – O you viper, budge, and begone!’

It was in vain that Dummie protested his innocence. A violent coup-de-pied broke off all further parlance. He made a clear house of the Mug; and the landlady thereof, tottering back to her elbow-chair, sought out another pipe, and, like all imaginative persons when the world goes wrong with them, consoled herself for the absence of realities by the creations of smoke.

Meanwhile, Dummie Dunnaker, muttering and murmuring bitter fancies, overtook Paul, and accused that youth of having been the occasion of the injuries he had just undergone. Paul was not at that moment in the humour best adapted for the patient bearing of accusations; he answered Mr Dunnaker very shortly; and that respectable individual, still smarting under his bruises, replied with equal tartness. Words grew high, and at length, Paul, desirous of concluding the conference, clenched his fist, and told the redoubted Dummie that he would ‘knock him down.’ There is something peculiarly harsh and stunning in those three hard, wirey, sturdy, stubborn monosyllables. Their very sound makes you double your fist – if you are a hero; or your pace – if you are a peaceable man. They produced an instant effect upon Dummie Dunnaker, aided as they were by the effect of an athletic and youthful figure, already fast approaching to the height of six feet, – a flushed cheek, and an eye that bespoke both passion and resolution. The rag-merchant’s voice sunk at once, and with the countenance of a wronged Cassius he whimpered forth, –

‘Knock me down! – O leetle Paul, vot vicked vhids are those! Vot! Dummie Dunnaker as has dandled you on his knee mony’s a time and oft! Vy, the cove’s art is as ard as junk, and as proud as a gardener’s dog vith a nosegay tied to his tail.’ This pathetic remonstrance softened Paul’s anger.

‘Well, Dummie,’ said he, laughing, ‘I did not mean to hurt you, and there’s an end of it; and I am very sorry for the dame’s ill conduct: and so I wish you a good morning.’

‘Vy, vere be you trotting to, leetle Paul?’ said Dummie, grasping him by the tail of the coat.

‘The deuce a bit I know,’ answered our hero; ‘but I think I shall drop a call on Long Ned.’

‘Avast there!’ said Dummie, speaking under his breath; ‘if so be as you von’t blab, I’ll tell you a bit of a secret. I heered as ’ow Long Ned started for Hampshire this werry morning on a toby consarn!’*

‘Ha!’ said Paul, ‘then hang me if I know what to do!’ As he uttered these words, a more thorough sense of his destitution (if he persevered in leaving the Mug) than he had hitherto felt rushed upon him; for Paul had designed for a while to throw himself on the hospitality of his Patagonian friend, and now that he found that friend was absent from London, and on so dangerous an expedition, he was a little puzzled what to do with that treasure of intellect and wisdom which he carried about upon his legs. Already he had acquired sufficient penetration (for Charles Trywit and Harry Finish were excellent masters for initiating a man into the knowledge of the world) to perceive that a person, however admirable may be his qualities, does not readily find a welcome without a penny in his pocket. In the neighbourhood of Thames Court he had, indeed, many acquaintances; but the fineness of his language, acquired from his education, and the elegance of his air, in which he attempted to blend, in happy association, the gallant effrontery of Mr Long Ned with the graceful negligence of Mr Augustus Tomlinson, had made him many enemies among those acquaintances; and he was not willing, – so great was our hero’s pride, – to throw himself on the chance of their welcome, or to publish, as it were, his exiled and crest-fallen state. As for those boon companions who had assisted him in making a wilderness of his pockets, he had already found, that that was the only species of assistance which they were willing to render him: in a word, he could not for the life of him conjecture in what quarter he should find the benefits of bed and board. While he stood with his finger to his lip, undecided and musing, but fully resolved at least on one thing – not to return to the Mug, – little Dummie, who was a good-natured fellow at the bottom, peered up in his face, and said, ‘Vy, Paul, my kid, you looks down in the chops: cheer up, care killed a cat!’

Observing that this appropriate and encouraging fact of natural history did not lessen the cloud upon Paul’s brow, the acute Dummie Dunnaker proceeded at once to the grand panacea for all evils, in his own profound estimation.

‘Paul, my ben cull,’ said he, with a knowing wink, and nudging the young gentleman in the left side, ‘vot do you say to a drop o’ blue ruin? Or, as you likes to be genteel, I doesn’t care if I sports you a glass of port!’ While Dunnaker was uttering this invitation, a sudden reminiscence flashed across Paul: he bethought him at once of Mac Grawler: and he resolved forthwith to repair to the abode of that illustrious sage, and petition at least for accommodation for the approaching night. So soon as he had come to this determination, he shook off the grasp of the amiable Dummie, and refusing, with many thanks, his hospitable invitation, requested him to abstract from the dame’s house, and lodge within his own, until called for, such articles of linen and clothing as belonged to Paul, and could easily be laid hold of, during one of the matron’s evening siestas, by the shrewd Dunnaker.