"Shan't get into mine!" returned Briggs, "promise him that! don't half like him; be bound he's an old sharper."
Cecilia, mean time, enquired what he desired to have.
"Half a guinea," he answered.
"Will that do?"
"For those who have nothing," said he, "it is much. Hereafter, you may assist them again. Go but and see their distresses, and you will wish to give them every thing."
Mr Briggs now, when actually between her fingers he saw the half guinea, could contain no longer; he twitched the sleeve of her gown, and pinching her arm, with a look of painful eagerness, said in a whisper "Don't give it! don't let him have it! chouse him, chouse him! nothing but an old bite!"
"Pardon me, Sir," said Cecilia, in a low voice, "his character is very well known to me." And then, disengaging her arm from him, she presented her little offering.
At this sight, Mr Briggs was almost outrageous, and losing in his wrath, all fear of the stranger, he burst forth with fury into the following outcries, "Be ruined! see it plainly; be fleeced! be stript! be robbed! won't have a gown to your back! won't have a shoe to your foot! won't have a rag in the world! be a beggar in the street! come to the parish! rot in a jail!--half a guinea at a time!--enough to break the Great Mogul!"
"Inhuman spirit of selfish parsimony!" exclaimed Albany, "repinest thou at this loan, given from thousands to those who have worse than nothing? who pay to-day in hunger for bread they borrowed yesterday from pity? who to save themselves from the deadly pangs of famine, solicit but what the rich know not when they possess, and miss not when they give?"
"Anan!" cried Briggs, recovering his temper from the perplexity of his understanding, at a discourse to which his ears were wholly unaccustomed, "what d'ye say?"
"If to thyself distress may cry in vain," continued Albany, "if thy own heart resists the suppliant's prayer, callous to entreaty, and hardened in the world, suffer, at least, a creature yet untainted, who melts at sorrow, and who glows with charity, to pay from her vast wealth a generous tax of thankfulness, that fate has not reversed her doom, and those whom she relieves, relieve not her!"
"Anan!" was again all the wondering Mr Briggs could say.
"Pray, ma'am," said Mr Hobson, to Cecilia, "if it's no offence, was the Gentleman ever a player?"
"I fancy not, indeed!"
"I ask pardon, then, ma'am; I mean no harm; but my notion was the gentleman might be speaking something by heart."