"Poor old soul! I believe that she is well in health, and I take care that she should not be poor in pocket." "But why not visit her?
Perhaps, like all great men, especially of a liberal turn of mind, you are ashamed of old friends, eh ?" "My good fellow, is that like me?
Why, you know the beaux of our set look askant on me for not keeping up my dignity, robbing only in company with well-dressed gentlemen, and swindling under the name of a lord's nephew.

No, my reasons are these: first, you must know, that the old dame had set her heart on my turning out an honest man." "And so you have," interrupted Augustus,--"honest to your party; what more would you have from either prig or politician ?" "I believe," continued Clifford, not heeding the interruption, "that my poor mother, before she died, desired that I might be reared honestly; and strange as it may seem to you, Dame Lobkins is a conscientious woman in her own way,--it is not her fault if I have turned out as I have done.

Now I know well that it would grieve her to the quick to see me what I am.

Secondly, my friend, under my new names, various as they are,--Jackson and Howard, Russell and Pigwiggin, Villiers and Gotobed, Cavendish and Solomons,--you may well suppose that the good persons in the neighbourhood of Thames Court have no suspicion that the adventurous and accomplished ruffler, at present captain of this district, under the new appellation of Lovett, is in reality no other than the obscure and surnameless Paul of the Mug.

Now you and I, Augustus, have read human nature, though in the black letter; and I know well that were I to make my appearance in Thames Court, and were the old lady (as she certainly would, not from unkindness, but insobriety,--not that she loves me less, but heavy wet more) to divulge the secret of that appearance--" "You know well," interrupted the vivacious Tomlinson, "that the identity of your former meanness with your present greatness would be easily traced; the envy and jealousy of your early friends aroused; a hint of your whereabout and your aliases given to the police, and yourself grabbed, with a slight possibility of a hempen consummation." "You conceive me exactly!" answered Clifford.