I will therefore take
your money, under the hope and trust that you will enable me to repay
you punctually."
"I will convince you, my lord," said the goldsmith, "that I mean to
deal with you as a creditor from whom I expect payment; and therefore,
you shall, with your own good pleasure, sign an acknowledgment for
these monies, and an obligation to content and repay me."
He then took from his girdle his writing materials, and, writing a few
lines to the purport he expressed, pulled out a small bag of gold from
a side-pouch under his cloak, and, observing that it should contain an
hundred pounds, proceeded to tell out the contents very methodically
upon the table. Nigel Olifaunt could not help intimating that this was
an unnecessary ceremonial, and that he would take the bag of gold on
the word of his obliging creditor; but this was repugnant to the old
man's forms of transacting business.
"Bear with me," he said, "my good lord,--we citizens are a wary and
thrifty generation; and I should lose my good name for ever within the
toll of Paul's, were I to grant quittance, or take acknowledgment,
without bringing the money to actual tale. I think it be right now--
and, body of me," he said, looking out at the window, "yonder come my
boys with my mule; for I must Westward Hoe. Put your monies aside, my
lord; it is not well to be seen with such goldfinches chirping about
one in the lodgings of London.
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