‘Then you haven’t heard!’
‘I have heard you, and so has this brute. I have heard nothing else.’
Mr. Bounderby, red and hot, planted himself in the centre of the path before the horse’s head, to explode his bombshell with more effect.
‘The Bank’s robbed!’
‘You don’t mean it!’
‘Robbed last night, sir. Robbed in an extraordinary manner. Robbed with a false key.’
‘Of much?’
Mr. Bounderby, in his desire to make the most of it, really seemed mortified by being obliged to reply, ‘Why, no; not of very much. But it might have been.’
‘Of how much?’
‘Oh! as a sum—if you stick to a sum—of not more than a hundred and fifty pound,’ said Bounderby, with impatience. ‘But it’s not the sum; it’s the fact. It’s the fact of the Bank being robbed, that’s the important circumstance. I am surprised you don’t see it.’