‘Why, she was here twice while I was away,’ returned Miss La Creevy. ‘I was afraid she mightn’t like to have me calling on her among those great folks in what’s-its-name Place, so I thought I’d wait a day or two, and if I didn’t see her, write.’
‘Ah!’ exclaimed Newman, cracking his fingers.
‘However, I want to hear all the news about them from you,’ said Miss La Creevy. ‘How is the old rough and tough monster of Golden Square? Well, of course; such people always are. I don’t mean how is he in health, but how is he going on: how is he behaving himself?’
‘Damn him!’ cried Newman, dashing his cherished hat on the floor; ‘like a false hound.’
‘Gracious, Mr. Noggs, you quite terrify me!’ exclaimed Miss La Creevy, turning pale.
‘I should have spoilt his features yesterday afternoon if I could have afforded it,’ said Newman, moving restlessly about, and shaking his fist at a portrait of Mr. Canning over the mantelpiece. ‘I was very near it. I was obliged to put my hands in my pockets, and keep ‘em there very tight. I shall do it some day in that little back-parlour, I know I shall. I should have done it before now, if I hadn’t been afraid of making bad worse. I shall double-lock myself in with him and have it out before I die, I’m quite certain of it.’
‘I shall scream if you don’t compose yourself, Mr. Noggs,’ said Miss La Creevy; ‘I’m sure I shan’t be able to help it.’
‘Never mind,’ rejoined Newman, darting violently to and fro. ‘He’s coming up tonight: I wrote to tell him. He little thinks I know; he little thinks I care. Cunning scoundrel! he don’t think that. Not he, not he. Never mind, I’ll thwart him—I, Newman Noggs. Ho, ho, the rascal!’
Lashing himself up to an extravagant pitch of fury, Newman Noggs jerked himself about the room with the most eccentric motion ever beheld in a human being: now sparring at the little miniatures on the wall, and now giving himself violent thumps on the head, as if to heighten the delusion, until he sank down in his former seat quite breathless and exhausted.
‘There,’ said Newman, picking up his hat; ‘that’s done me good. Now I’m better, and I’ll tell you all about it.’