“What d’ye think this is, Munro? Eh?”
“I have no idea.”
“Our day’s take. Eh, Hetty?” He undid a string, and in an instant a pile of gold and silver rattled down upon the cloth, the coins whirling and clinking among the dishes. One rolled off the table and was retrieved by the maid from some distant corner.
“What is it, Mary? A half sovereign? Put it in your pocket. What did the lot come to, Hetty?”
“Thirty-one pound eight.”
“You see, Munro! One day’s work.” He plunged his hand into his trouser pocket and brought out a pile of sovereigns, which he balanced in his palm. “Look at that, laddie. Rather different from my Avonmouth form, eh? What?”
“It will be good news for them,” I suggested.
He was scowling at me in an instant with all his old ferocity. You cannot imagine a more savage-looking creature than Cullingworth is when his temper goes wrong. He gets a perfectly fiendish expression in his light blue eyes, and all his hair bristles up like a striking cobra. He isn’t a beauty at his best, but at his worst he’s really phenomenal. At the first danger signal his wife had ordered the maid from the room.
“What rot you do talk, Munro!” he cried. “Do you suppose I am going to cripple myself for years by letting those debts hang on to me?”
“I understood that you had promised,” said I. “Still, of course, it is no business of mine.”