"Another offer!"
"Yes. He'll know well enough that you'll be thinking of his death. And for all they do say he might pop off any day."
"He's a younger man than me, Aby, by full ten years."
"What of that? You may pop off any day too, mayn't you? I believe you old fellows don't think of dying nigh as hoften as we young ones."
"You young ones are always looking for us old ones to go. We all know that well enough."
"That's when you've got anything to leave behind you, which hain't the case with you, governor, just at present. But what I was saying is this. He'll know well enough that you can split upon his son hafter he's gone, every bit as well as you can split on him now."
"Oh, I always looked to make the young gentleman pay up handsome, if so be the old gentleman went off the hooks. And if so be he and I should go off together like, why you'd carry on, of course. You'll have the proofs, you know."
"Oh, I should, should I? Well, we'll look to them by-and-by. But I'll tell you what, governor, the best way is to make all that safe. We'll make him another hoffer—for a regular substantial family harrangement—"
"A family arrangement, eh?"
"Yes; that's the way they always manage things when great family hinterests is at stake. Let him give us a cool seven thousand a year between us while he's alive; let him put you down for twenty thousand when he's dead—that'd come out of the young gentleman's share of the property, of course—and then let him give me his daughter Hemmeline, with another twenty thousand tacked on to her skirt-tail. I should be mum then for hever for the honour of the family."