Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 277: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER XXVII TOO LATE ‘Any little trifling inconvenience! ’?’ — these were the words that the Prince of Wales applied to the ruinous em- barrassments into which he himself had been the means of plunging a highly respectable merchant of the City of London. / And it is always with similar levity that the aristocracy speak of the applications made to them by their tradesmen for money, no matter how long it may have been owing. In their estimation they confer an honour upon the shop- keepers with whom they deal; and therefore the vile ple- beians must await their patrician convenience. What! dare to ask for payment of a bill, or even a small sum on account? Who ever heard of such insolence? Withdraw your custom immediately, ye proud ones, trom such un- mannerly fellows! What is it to you if such timely lquida- tion would rescue an industrious, hard-working man from bankruptcy and his children from the workhouse? What is it to you if even the regular payments of your bills would save honest traders from the most cruel embarrassments? What is it to you if the whole community of artisans, me- chanics, and operatives be doomed to suffer, throughout its various ramifications and in all its manifold sections, in consequence of your want of punctuality? Nothing, nothing; you care not a straw for the miseries which ye thus entail upon the world of industry! Show us a class of persons, on the face of God Almighty’s earth, more thoroughly heartless than the English aris- tocracy. No— you cannot! There exists not an oligarchy in the world so devoid of proper feelings as that which com- prises the nobility and the fashion of this realm. ‘Talk of 260 EONNIE KOOKS (E(0) m