"But others don't know you as well as I do, and there's plenty of them would think you were chicken-hearted."
"Do I look like it?" asked the Tenderhearted Oysterman in a tone of villanous humility.
"No, you don't. But you'd make believe that you was. If I didn't know you for one who would stick at nothing--nothing, not even short of--"
"Never mind what," interrupted the Oysterman, looking at Milly, who was employed nursing her baby, and did not appear to be taking heed of what was said.
"If I didn't know you for that, then, I'd have nothing to do with you, for your infernal cant sickens me."
There was a pause in the conversation. Grif still held Milly's hand hard. He felt there was something coming which would affect Alice, and every word that was being uttered stamped itself upon his mind.
"Dick Handfield we must have, and Dick Handfield we will have," resumed Jim. "If we can't have him one way, we will another. I've got a hook in him already, and if he hangs on and off as he's been doing, the white-livered skunk! the last two weeks, he'll get a dose that'll pretty well settle him."
"What sort of a dose, Jim?"
"I bought a watch of him this morning--here it is. I gave him five pounds for it. It's a pretty little thing. Just the thing for Milly! Milly."
"Yes, Jim," answered Milly, disengaging her hand from Grif's grasp, and walking towards Jim, for fear he should come to the bed, and discover Grif.