“Won’t be back for a fortnight. You know as well as I do. Lor’ ’a’ mussy! on’y think of our taking up a game like this, old man!”
“It’s awful—it’s awful, Orthur.”
“Yah! we can’t help it. How were we to know that everything we backed would go wrong and leave us in such a hole?” said Arthur, as he filed away.
“But it seems like burglary,” whispered the butler.
“Burglary be blowed! Look here, if you’re going to whine I shall cut it, and my stick too, and you may face it out with the guv’nors. What are you going to say when they ask after that gold centre-piece, and the rest of the plate you’ve lent my uncle?”
“We’ve lent my uncle!” said the butler, reproachfully.
“Oh, well, we then. I’m ready to take my share. It was their fault, and we’re driven to this to get money to take out all you’ve pledged.”
“We’ve pledged.”
“We be hanged! You did the pledging, but I don’t want to back out of it. I’m going to stand by you. Only, you see, circumstances are against us, old man. We meant to come quietly and get enough out of here to square us and make us able to make a fresh start on our own hook—I’m sick of their tips—but as soon as we come to do it quietly, meaning to sleep here for the night, that old cat cuts up rough, and we have to quiet her. Consequence is, old man, we’ve got to go the whole thing and make ourselves rich men all at once. Don’t matter. Just as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, so I mean to make it two sheep if I can—two sheep a-piece, old chap. There, that ought to do it now.”
He ceased filing and applied the key again, to find that he could turn it a little more.