[The Adventures of Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett]@TWC D-Link book
The Adventures of Roderick Random

CHAPTER XVII
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In less than a quarter of an hour, I was called in again, received my qualification scaled up, and was ordered to pay five shillings.

I laid down my half-guinea upon the table, and stood some time, until one of them bade me begone; to this I replied, "I will when I have got my change:" upon which another threw me five shillings and sixpence, saying, I should not be a true Scotchman if I went away without my change.

I was afterwards obliged to give three shillings and sixpence to the beadles, and a shilling to an old woman who swept the hall: this disbursement sank my finances to thirteen-pence halfpenny, with which I was sneaking off, when Jackson, perceiving it, came up to me, and begged I would tarry for him, and he would accompany me to the other end of the town, as soon as his examination should be over.

I could not refuse this to a person that was so much my friend; but I was astonished at the change of his dress which was varied in half-an-hour from what I have already described to a very grotesque fashion.

His head was covered with an old smoke tie-wig that did not boast one crooked hair, and a slouched hat over it, which would have very well become a chimney-sweeper, or a dustman; his neck was adorned with a black crape, the ends of which he had twisted, and fixed in the button-hole of a shabby greatcoat that wrapped up his whole body; his white silk stockings were converted into black worsted hose: and his countenance was rendered venerable by wrinkles, and a beard of his own painting.


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