“Puppy!” he exclaimed, bringing his fist down bang upon the slips of paper, “puppy! Fine gentleman. Haughty aristocrat. My dear Arthur, what a fix you are in, and how this will diminish dear Anna Maria’s money!”
“Here’s another, and there are more to come!” he cried, roaring with laughter; and then he had a spin till he felt giddy, after which he spun back in the other direction to counteract the dizziness, chuckled, rubbed his hands, found his cigar was out, and paused to light it before going through a less heavy batch of bills, the result being that he had beneath these paperweights a goodly show of the acceptances of Lady Littletown, Major Malpas, and Arthur Litton, over which he sat and gloated, smoking the while.
“What a beautiful thing a bill is!” exclaimed Elbraham at last. “It’s a blessing to an honest man: helps him out of his difficulties; gives such a nice discount to the holder; and shows him how to punish wicked people like these.”
He had another chuckle and a spin here, his feelings carrying him away to such an extent that he rather over-spun himself, and felt so giddy that he had to refresh himself from a silver flask that he kept in a drawer.
“How I shall come down upon ’em!” he said at last, as he puffed away reflectively at his cigar, which now grew rather short. “A thousand of bricks is nothing to it. My dear Lady Littletown will go down upon her knees to me, and ask me to dinner. Ha! ha! ha! she’ll want to find me another wife, perhaps, curse her! What a bad lot they are! I only wish I’d a few bills of the old cats’ at the private apartments—our dear aunts.”
He seemed to reflect here.
“I don’t think Marie’s a bad sort, after all,” he said at last. “Old Moorpark had a deal the best of the bargain. I haven’t anything to say against them: they cut Clo long enough ago, and quite right too. She’s a devil! What that gal has cost me!”
There was another fit of reflection here, during which Mr Elbraham threw the end of his cigar into the waste-paper basket, and lit another, longer and stouter than the last, after taking a band of white and gold paper from around its middle.
“Then there’s Master Arthur Litton,” he said. “Pitched me over as soon as he’d married his rich wife. Called me an Israelitish humbug. Yes, conceited fool. Forgot all about his paper, and how I had helped him. Regularly cut me dead. Nice bit of money he had with Lady Anna Maria Morton, but he has made it fly, and all he could finger has gone. Wait a bit! I’ll have him on his knees. He’ll talk about Shylock then, eh? Only wait! I’ll have something better than a pound of flesh.”
He chuckled and smoked for some minutes, and then the smoke began to come in longer puffs, the lines marked by his triumph and mirth disappeared, and he glared and rolled his unpleasantly prominent eyes.