‘Devil!’ shrieked Billy, as he dropped. ‘Oh, my precious mother. Devil—devil—devil—you’re a liar—you’re a liar—Bendigo and Ballarat—Ballarat and Bendigo—Pickles!’
Having thus run through a portion of his vocabulary, he subsided into silence, and let Slivers pick him up in order to go home.
‘A nice pair you are,’ muttered Martha, grimly, looking at them. ‘I wish I had the thrashing of you. Won’t you stay and see par?’ she called out as Slivers departed.
‘I’ll come to-morrow,’ answered Slivers, angrily, for he felt very much out of temper; then, in a lower voice, he observed to himself, ‘I’d like to put that jade in a teacup and crush her.’
He stumped home in silence, thinking all the time; and it was only when he arrived back in his office that he gave utterance to his thoughts.
‘It couldn’t have been either of the Frenchmen,’ he said, lighting his pipe. ‘She must have done it herself.’
CHAPTER XVI. — MCINTOSH SPEAKS HIS MIND
It was some time before Mrs Villiers recovered from the shock caused by her encounter with her husband. The blow he had struck her on the side of the head turned out to be more serious than was at first anticipated, and Selina deemed it advisable that a doctor should be called in. So Archie went into Ballarat, and returned to the Pactolus with Dr Gollipeck, an eccentric medical practitioner, whose peculiarities were the talk of the city.