Jim, at Mrs. John’s first movement, had recovered possession of the button.
“No, you don’t!” he said quite savagely. “I know all about it, and ’tain’t yourn by rights.”
“Jim, Jim,” cried Miss Belmont in great agitation; “it is hers, indeed; please give it up. You don’t think what you make me suffer!”
But the man was black with a lowering determination.
“ ’Tain’t,” he said. “Keep off, you! I’ve not thrown agen the devil for nothing. It’s goin’ to be Miss Emma’s or nobody’s.”
“Not mine,” cried the poor lady again. “I don’t want it. Not for worlds. I wouldn’t take it now!”
And then Mrs. John Belmont, in one discordant explosion of fury, gave away her case for ever.
“Insolent! Beyond endurance!” she shrieked, and whirled, with a flaming face, upon her cavalier.
“Archibald! why do you stand grinning there? Why don’t you take it from him?”
Thus prompted, Archibald, in great confusion, uttered an inarticulate “Haw!” explained himself in a second and clearer one, and strode threateningly towards the bed. Watching, with glittering eyes, the advance, Jim, at the last moment, whipped the button into his mouth and swallowed it!