'Tis not a button to me, Sir, who talks about me; and I don't owe a guinea, Sir, that is, that I could not pay to-morrow, if I liked it; and there's nothing to trouble me--nothing, Sir, except this dirty, little, gouty dyspepsy, scarce worth talking about.
Then came a considerable silence; and Toole's active little mind, having just made a note of this, tripped off smartly to half-a-dozen totally different topics, and he was mentally tippling his honest share of a dozen of claret, with a pleasant little masonic party at the Salmon-leap, on Sunday next, and was just going to charm them with his best song, and a new verse of his own compounding, when Sturk, in a moment, dispersed the masons, and brought him back by the ear at a jump from the Salmon-leap, with a savage---- 'And I'd like to know, Sir, who the deuce, or, rather, what the -- --( _plague_ we'll say) could put into your head, Sir, to suppose any such matter ?' But this was only one of Sturk's explosions, and he and little Toole parted no better and no worse friends than usual, in ten minutes more at the latter's door-step.
So Toole said to Mrs.T.that evening---- 'Sturk owes money, mark my words, sweetheart.

Remember _I_ say it--he'll cool his heels in a prison, if he's no wiser than of late, before a twel'month.

Since the beginning of February he has lost--just wait a minute, and let me see--ay, that, L150 by the levanting of old Tom Farthingale; and, I had it to-day from little O'Leary, who had it from Jim Kelly, old Craddock's conducting clerk, he's bit to the tune of three hundred more by the failure of Larkin, Brothers, and Hoolaghan.
You see a little bit of usury under the rose is all very well for a vulgar dog like Sturk, if he knows the town, and how to go about it; but hang, it, he knows nothing.

Why, the turnpike-man, over the way, would not have taken old Jos.

Farthingale's bill for fippence--no, nor his bond neither; and he's stupid beside--but he can't help that, the hound!--and he'll owe a whole year's rent only six weeks hence, and he has not a shilling to bless himself with.