imprudence at least! Why could he not live upon his half-pay? What had he to do to run himself into debt in this outrageous manner?'
'I wish, indeed,' cries the serjeant, 'he had been a little more considerative; but I hope this will be a warning to him.'
'How am I sure of that,' answered the colonel; 'or what reason is there to expect it? extravagance is a vice of which men are not so easily cured. I have thought a great deal of this matter, Mr. serjeant; and, upon the most mature deliberation, I am of opinion that it will be better, both for him and his poor lady, that he should smart a little more.'
'Your honour, sir, to be sure is in the right,' replied the serjeant; 'but yet, sir, if you will pardon me for speaking, I hope you will be pleased to consider my poor lady's case. She suffers, all this while, as much or more than the lieutenant; for I know her so well, that I am certain she will never have a moment's ease till her husband is out of confinement.'
'I know women better than you, serjeant,' cries the colonel; 'they sometimes place their affections on a husband as children do on their nurse; but they are both to be weaned. I know you, serjeant, to be a fellow of sense as well as spirit, or I should not speak so freely to you; but I took a fancy to you a long time ago, and I intend to serve you; but first, I ask you this question--Is your attachment to Mr. Booth or his lady?'
'Certainly, sir,' said the serjeant, 'I must love my lady best. Not but I have a great affection for the lieutenant too, because I know my lady hath the same; and, indeed, he hath been always very good to me as far as was in his power. A lieutenant, your honour knows, can't do a great deal; but I have always found him my friend upon all occasions.'
'You say true,' cries the colonel; 'a lieutenant can do but little; but I can do much to serve you, and will too. But let me ask you one question: Who was the lady whom I saw last night with Mrs. Booth at her lodgings?'
Here the serjeant blushed, and repeated, 'The lady, sir?'
'Ay, a lady, a woman,' cries the colonel, 'who supped with us last night. She looked rather too much like a gentlewoman for the mistress of a lodging-house.'
The serjeant's cheeks glowed at this compliment to his wife; and he was just going to own her when the colonel proceeded: 'I think I never saw in my life so ill-looking, sly, demure a b---; I would give something, methinks, to know who she was.'
'I don't know, indeed,' cries the serjeant, in great confusion; 'I know nothing about her.'
'I wish you would enquire,' said the colonel, 'and let me know her name, and likewise what she is: I have a strange curiosity to know, and let me see you again this evening exactly at seven.'
'And will not your honour then go to the lieutenant this morning?' said Atkinson.
'It is not in my power,' answered the colonel; 'I am engaged another way. Besides, there is no haste in this affair. If men will be imprudent they must suffer the consequences. Come to me at seven, and bring me all the particulars you can concerning that ill-looking jade I mentioned to you, for I am resolved to know who she is. And so good- morrow to you, serjeant; be assured I will take an opportunity to do something for you.'
Though some readers may, perhaps, think the serjeant not unworthy of the freedom with which the colonel treated him; yet that haughty officer would have been very backward to have condescended to such familiarity with one of his rank had he not proposed some design from it. In truth, he began to conceive hopes of making the serjeant instrumental to his design on Amelia; in other words, to convert him into a pimp; an office in which the colonel had been served by Atkinson's betters, and which, as he knew it was in his power very well to reward him, he had no apprehension that the serjeant would decline--an opinion which the serjeant might have pardoned, though he had never given the least grounds for it, since the colonel borrowed it from the knowledge of his own heart. This dictated to him that he, from a bad motive, was capable of desiring to debauch his friend's wife; and the same heart inspired him to hope that another, from another bad motive, might be guilty of the same breach of friendship in assisting him. Few men, I believe, think better of others than of
