noon
I pick up the names of their acquaintance ; amours and little squabbles are easily gleaned among servants and neighbours ; and indeed people themselves are the best intelligencers in the world for our purpose : they dare not puzzle us for their own sakes , for every one is anxious to hear what they wish to believe , and they who repeat it , to laugh at it when they have done , are generally more serious than their hearers are apt to imagine . With a tolerable good memory , and some share of cunning , with the help of walking a-nights over heaths and church-yards , with this , and showing the tricks of that there dog , whom I stole from the serjeant of a marching regiment -LRB- and by the way , he can steal too upon occasion -RRB- , I make shift to pick up a livelihood . My trade , indeed , is none of the honestest ; yet people are not much cheated neither who give a few half-pence for a prospect of happiness , which I have heard some persons say is all a man can arrive at in this world . But I must bid you good day , sir , for I have three miles to walk before noon , to inform some boarding-school young ladies whether their husbands are to be peers of the realm or captains in the army : a question which I promised to answer them by that time . '' Harley had drawn a shilling from his pocket ; but Virtue bade him consider on whom he was going to bestow it . Virtue held back his arm ; but a milder form , a younger sister of Virtue 's , not so severe as Virtue , nor so serious as Pity , smiled upon him ; his fingers lost their compression , nor did Virtue offer to catch the money as it fell . It had no sooner reached the ground than the watchful cur -LRB- a trick he had been taught -RRB- snapped it up , and , contrary to the most approved method of stewardship , delivered it immediately into the hands of his master .