'How do you mean sharpers, Sir?'
'Why they don't pay everyone his own, not one in ten of them. And they're as proud as Lucifer. If I was to go among them to-morrow, I'll lay a wager they'd take no notice of me: unless I was to ask them to dinner. And a man may soon eat up his substance, if he's so over complaisant.'
'Surely, Major,' cried Camilla, 'my brother cannot be much longer before he joins us?—remembers us rather.'
'Who else could desert or forget you?' cried the Major.
'It's a moot point whether he'll come or no, I see that,' said Mr. Dubster, quite enraged; 'them young 'squires never know what to do for their fun. I must needs say I think it's pity but what he'd been brought up to some calling. 'Twould have steadied him a little, I warrant. He don't seem to know much of the troubles of life.'
A shower of rain now revived his hopes that the fear of being wet might bring him back; not considering how little sportsmen regard wet jackets.
'However,' continued he, 'it's really a piece of good luck that he was not taken with a fancy to leave us upon my island; and then we might all have been soused by this here rain: and he could just as well have walked off with my bridge as with the ladder.'
Here, to his inexpressible relief, Lionel, from the road, hailed them; and Camilla, with emotion the most violent, perceived Edgar was by his side.
Mr. Dubster, however, angry as well as glad, very solemnly said, 'I wonder, Sir, what you think my workmen has been doing all this time, with nobody to look after them? Besides that I promised a pot o'beer to a lad to wheel me away all that rubbish that I'd cut out of my grotto; and it's a good half day's work, do it who will; and ten to one if they've stirred a nail, all left to themselves so.'
'Pho, pho, man, you've been too happy, I hope, to trouble your mind about business. How do do my little girls? how you have been entertained?'