‘Me, sure enough,’ was the reply, with a chuckle. ‘Come up sharp, then.’
Humming a tune, Joseph ascended to the sitting-room on the first floor, and threw himself on a seat. His wife stood just in front of him, her sturdy arms a-kimbo; her look was fiercely expectant, answering in some degree to the smile with which he looked here and there.
‘Well, can’t you speak?’
‘No hurry, Mrs. Clem; no hurry, my dear. It’s all right. The old man’s rolling in money.’
‘And what about your share?’
Joseph laughed obstreperously, his wife’s brow lowering the while.
‘Just tell me, can’t you?’ she cried.
‘Of course I will. The best joke you ever heard. You had yours yesterday, Mrs. Clem; my turn comes to-day. My share is—just nothing at all. Not a penny! Not a cent! Swallow that, old girl, and tell me how it tastes.’
‘You’re a liar!’ shouted the other, her face flushing scarlet, her eyes aflame with rage.
‘Never told a lie in my life,’ replied her husband, still laughing noisily. But for that last glass of cordial on the way home he could scarcely have enjoyed so thoroughly the dramatic flavour of the situation. Joseph was neither a bully nor a man of courage; the joke with which he was delighting himself was certainly a rich one, but it had its element of danger, and only by abandoning himself to riotous mirth could he overcome the nervousness with which Clem’s fury threatened to affect him. She, coming forward in the attitude of an enraged fishwife, for a few moments made the room ring with foul abuse, that vituperative vernacular of the nether world, which has never yet been exhibited by typography, and presumably never will be.