, what do you say, gentlemen? shall we adjourn? No use standing
here.'

By the invitation to adjourn, it was well understood by the committee
Kilne addressed, that they were invited to pass his threshold, and
partake of a morning draught. Barnes, the butcher, had no objection
whatever, and if Grossby, a man of milder make, entertained any, the
occasion and common interests to be discussed, advised him to waive them.
In single file these mourners entered the publican's house, where Kilne,
after summoning them from behind the bar, on the important question, what
it should be? and receiving, first, perfect acquiescence in his views as
to what it should be, and then feeble suggestions of the drink best
befitting that early hour and the speaker's particular constitution,
poured out a toothful to each, and one to himself.

'Here's to him, poor fellow!' said Kilne; and was deliberately echoed
twice.

'Now, it wasn't that,' Kilne pursued, pointing to the bottle in the midst
of a smacking of lips, 'that wasn't what got him into difficulties. It
was expensive luckshries. It was being above his condition. Horses!
What's a tradesman got to do with horses? Unless he's retired! Then he's
a gentleman, and can do as he likes. It's no use trying to be a gentleman
if you can't pay for it. It always ends bad. Why, there was he,
consorting with gentlefolks--gay as a lark! Who has to pay for it?'

Kilne's fellow-victims maintained a rather doleful tributary silence.

'I'm not saying anything against him now,' the publican further observed.
'It 's too late. And there! I'm sorry he's gone, for one. He was as kind
a hearted a man as ever breathed. And there! perhaps it was just as much
my fault; I couldn't say "No" to him,--dash me, if I could!'

Lymport was a prosperous town, and in prosperity the much-despised
British tradesman is not a harsh, he is really a well-disposed, easy
soul, and requires but management, manner, occasional instalments--just
to freshen the account--and a surety that he who debits is on the spot,
to be a right royal king of credit. Only the account must never drivel.
'Stare aut crescere' appears to be his feeling on that point, and the
departed Mr. Melchisedec undoubtedly understood him there; for the
running on of the account looked deplorable and extraordinary now that
Mr. Melchisedec was no longer in a position to run on with it, and it was
precisely his doing so which had prevented it from being brought to a