"Seventy pounds! If you talk to me any more of seventy pounds, I will fly at your face." As she spoke this she jumped across at him as though she were really on the point of attacking him with her nails, and he, in dismay, retreated to the door. "You, and your seventy pounds! Oh, you English! What mean mens you are! Oh! a Frenchman would despise to do it. Yes; or a Russian or a Pole. But you,—you want it all down in black and white, like a butcher's beel. You know nothing, and understand nothing, and can never speak, and can never hold your tongues. You have no head, but the head of a bull. A bull can break all the china in a shop,—dash, smash, crash,—all the pretty things gone in a minute! So can an Englishman. Your seventy pounds! You will come again to me for seventy pounds, I think." In her energy she had acted the bull, and had exhibited her idea of the dashing, the smashing and the crashing, by the motion of her head and the waving of her hands.
"And you decline to say anything about the seventy pounds?" said Doodles, resolving that his courage should not desert him.
Whereupon the divine Sophie laughed. "Ha, ha, ha! I see you have not got on any gloves, Captain Booddle."
"Gloves; no. I don't wear gloves."
"Nor your uncle with the leetle property in Warwickshire? Captain Clavering, he wears a glove. He is a handy man." Doodles stared at her, understanding nothing of this. "Perhaps it is in your waistcoat pocket," and she approached him fearlessly, as though she were about to deprive him of his watch.
"I don't know what you mean," said he, retreating.
"Ah, you are not a handy man, like my friend the other captain, so you had better go away. Yes; you had better go to Warwickshire. In Warwickshire, I suppose, they make ready for your Michaelmas dinners. You have four months to get fat. Suppose you go away and get fat."
Doodles understood nothing of her sarcasm, but began to perceive that he might as well take his departure. The woman was probably a lunatic, and his friend Archie had no doubt been grossly deceived when he was sent to her for assistance. He had some faint idea that the seventy pounds might be recovered from such a madwoman; but in the recovery his friend would be exposed, and he saw that the money must be abandoned. At any rate, he had not been soft enough to dispose of any more treasure.
"Good-morning, ma'am," he said, very curtly.
"Good-morning to you, Captain Booddle. Are you coming again another day?"