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Do you know that I am beginning to believe in presentiments?" "You becoming superstitious! Why, may I ask?" "I refused to do a nice little piece of ready-money business this morning." "Did you?" "Yes, because I had a sort of feeling that made me resist all temptation to leave myself without cash. Imagine!
And as he thought of his own career; his ready-money payments; his obedience to certain rules of the game, rules, I mean, against cheating; as he thought of his hands, which in his own estimation were beautifully clean; his diligence in his profession, which to him was honorable; his hard work; his late hours; his devotion to a task which was often tedious; his many periods of heart-rending loss, which when they occurred would drive him nearly mad; his small customary gains; his inability to put by anything for old age; of the narrow edge by which he himself was occasionally divided from defalcation, he spoke to himself of himself as of an honest, hard-working professional man upon whom the world was peculiarly hard.
In the course of this morning a posse of villagers was seen trooping up the avenue, with boys shouting in advance. As it drew near, we perceived Ready-Money Jack Tibbets striding along, wielding his cudgel in one hand, and with the other grasping the collar of a tall fellow, whom, on still nearer approach, we recognised for the redoubtable gipsy hero, Starlight Tom.
The common herd of the village fell back with respect; the boys were driven back by Christy and his compeers; while Ready-Money Jack maintained his ground and his hold of the prisoner, and was surrounded by the tailor, the schoolmaster, and several other dignitaries of the village, and by the clamorous brood of gipsies, who were neither to be silenced nor intimidated.
In the meantime, old Ready-Money was kept completely in the dark; both parties were in awe and uncertainty as to what might be his way of taking the matter, and dreaded to awaken the sleeping lion. Between father and son, therefore, the worthy Mrs. Tibbets was full of business, and at her wit's end.
Among their joint productions are Ready-money Mortiboy , and the Golden Butterfly , both, especially the latter, very successful. This connection was brought to an end by the death of Rice in 1882. The two latter belonged to a series in which he endeavoured to arouse the public conscience to a sense of the sadness of life among the poorest classes in cities.
Lady Lillycraft has given repeated audiences to the culprit's weeping wife, at the Hall door; and the servant-maids have stolen out to confer with the gipsy women under the trees. As to the little ladies of the family, they are all outrageous at Ready-Money Jack, whom they look upon in the light of a tyrannical giant of fairy tale.
Pell, with an authority to deliver to the bearer the formal discharge which his prudent parent had had the foresight to leave in the hands of that learned gentleman, in case it should be, at any time, required on an emergency; his next proceeding was, to invest his whole stock of ready-money in the purchase of five-and-twenty gallons of mild porter, which he himself dispensed on the racket-ground to everybody who would partake of it; this done, he hurra'd in divers parts of the building until he lost his voice, and then quietly relapsed into his usual collected and philosophical condition.
He was not exactly aware how hardly his father was pressed for ready-money; the squire had never spoken to him on the subject without being angry; and many of his loose contradictory statements all of which, however contradictory they might appear, had their basis in truth were set down by his son to the exaggeration of passion.
Proofs, however, were too strong. Ready-Money Jack told his story in a straight-forward, independent way, nothing daunted by the presence in which he found himself. He had suffered from various depredations on his sheepfold and poultry-yard, and had at length kept watch, and caught the delinquent in the very act of making off with a sheep on his shoulders.
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