Charley kept his appointment, and came away from Mr.M'Ruen's with a well-contented mind.

He had, it is true, left L5 behind him, and had also left the bill, still entire; but he had obtained a promise of unlimited assistance from the good-natured gentleman, and had also received instructions how he was to get a brother clerk to draw a bill, how he was to accept it himself, and how his patron was to discount it for him, paying him real gold out of the Bank of England in exchange for his worthless signature.
Charley stepped lighter on the ground as he left Mr.M'Ruen's house on that eventful morning than he had done for many a day.
There was something delightful in the feeling that he could make money of his name in this way, as great bankers do of theirs, by putting it at the bottom of a scrap of paper.

He experienced a sort of pride too in having achieved so respectable a position in the race of ruin which he was running, as to have dealings with a bill-discounter.

He felt that he was putting himself on a par with great men, and rising above the low level of the infernal navvies.

Mr.M'Ruen had pulled the bill out of a heap of bills which he always carried in his huge pocket-book, and showed to Charley the name of an impoverished Irish peer on the back of it; and the sight of that name had made Charley quite in love with rum.