"O, that's it, is it?" said Foxey, glowering at him, and speaking in a dull thick voice. "Moved off the course! a drunken nuisance, eh? You'll sing a very different toon to this, Master Lloyd, before I've done with you. O, you can't come the high jeff over me," he continued, raising his tone; "for all your standin' in with big swells now; we know what you were once; we know--"
"Will you be quiet, you old fool, and say what you want?" said Gilbert, turning fiercely upon him.
"What I want? Ah, that's more like it! What I want? Well, that's easily told, and that's more than most people can say. What I want is money."
"I gave you money last night--more than you can have spent, or ought to have spent."
"Ah, that's more like it: what I canspend--Well, no matter. However, that's not the way I mean in which I want money. Look here, Gilbert Lloyd; I'm tired of this cadging life; I'm sick of hikin' up and down from one gamblin'-place to another; I'm disgusted with the Continent, and the foreigners, all the lot of 'em."
"O, you are, eh?" said Lloyd with a sneer; "I should scarcely have thought it."
"Yes," replied Foxey, in perfect good faith, "I am thoroughly. What I long for is to get back to England, to see my old pals, to lead my old life."
"Indeed," sneered Gilbert again; "but from what I understand from you there would be some difficulty in carrying out that pleasant little arrangement."
"None that you couldn't help me to settle at once. They all think their money's clean gone; but if I'm to come on the turf again, it would never do for me to come out as a welsher, so I must pay 'em something; but ever so little would square it. Then, if I just had a little trifle in hand to start with, and you gave me the office when you knew of a good thing--and you must hear lots, havin' the management of that young swell's stable--well, I should do as right as ninepence."
There was a minute's pause, and then Lloyd said: