“’Ennery Pash,” supplied Mr. Dobb. “You was the happle of his heye, Peter!”
“Loved me like a father he did,” stated Mr. Lock. “Always together we was, didn’t you say, Horace?”
“Right up to the day before ’e died so sudden,” instructed Mr. Dobb. “And then you went away on business, and you never come back till weeks after the melancholy event,” he ended, with pride of artistry.
“That’s right,” said Mr. Lock. “And what was he like to look at, Horace?”
“A snuffy, grubby little chap with sandy whiskers and a bald ’ead,” returned Mr. Dobb.
“He don’t seem exactly the kind of relation to be proud of,” complained Mr. Lock. “Can’t you do me better than that, Horace?”
“You don’t get misers with top-’ats and white weskits, Peter,” pointed out Mr. Dobb. “If ’e’d spent all ’is money on clothes, ’e wouldn’t ’ave ’ad any to ’ide in the seat of ’is favourite old arm-chair, would ’e?”
“By the way, ’Orace,” put in Mr. Clark, “where did you get the chair to start with?”
“Bought it with a odd lot of stuff at a farm sale a few miles away. It ain’t worth stuffing and re-up’olstering, so I thought I’d try to sell it as it was, and that’s ’ow I come to ’atch out this idea I’ve been a-telling you of.”
“Well, you’ve ’it it on just the right chap in Tommy Lane,” approved Mr. Tridge. “’E drops into my place pretty well every day for a shave, and I never see such a old idjit for believing what ’e’s told! You ought to ’ear some of the adventures of seafaring life I’ve told ’im! Why, they almost make me choke, telling ’em! And yet he’d swallow ’em down without so much as a cough!”