“Well, I was always grumbling then, and wanting to be well off; but, somehow, we was very happy,” he continued, reseating himself in his easy chair. “Now I’m well off, I’m always feeling as if I wanted something else. But I don’t know: if Jessie would only look all right again, and matters be square, I don’t think I should grumble much. Well, here goes once more.”
He gave the paper a fierce shake, got his leg well over the arm of the chair, and went on reading aloud.
”‘The Chancellor of the Ex-exchequer ap-peal-ed to the ’Ouse to give doo con-sid-e-ra-tion to the wote—vote—and said—plead—’ Blow the paper! it’s awfully dry work going through all this ’Ouse of Commons business every morning. Not half so interesting as the little bits about the accidents and murders and ’saults down at the bottom of the weekly papers.—One never knows where one is; and the way I get the two sides of the ’Ouse mixed up together makes me thankful I ain’t in Parlymint, or I should be doing some mischief. I wish Jessie would come. The members don’t seem to talk quite so much stuff when she reads. Poor lass! I’d give a thousand pounds down—and I could give it, too,” he added, with a fierce slap on his knee—“to see her looking as well and happy as she used to.”
He stopped, thinking for a few minutes.
“No,” he said aloud, “I haven’t done wrong. I’ve said it a dozen times, and I says it again. ‘No, my lass, I ask no questions about it,’ I says; ‘but that was an unpleasant piece of business about Fred Fraser, as is a reg’lar scamp; and if you loved Tom you didn’t do right. You says he came and threw up something at the window, and you opened it, thinking it was Tom. Well, my gal, you didn’t do right then, after what had happened.’ But there, it’s all over now—they belong to another set, unless they find out as we’re well off now, and Max wants to be friends. Ha! ha! ha! I shouldn’t wonder if he did some day. Ah, well! let’s have some more paper.”
He went on reading for five minutes, and then threw the sheet impatiently away.
“If it wasn’t for seeming so ignorant, I wouldn’t read a blessed line of it,” he cried. “Talk, talk, talk! Why, they might say it all in half an hour; only one seems so out of everything if one can’t talk about politics. No one ever says a word about the interesting paragraphs. I’m getting very tired of it all, and if ever I go into Parlymint I shall try for a comfortable seat below the gangway, or a hammock in the cabin.”
He pulled out a handsome self-winding gold watch, looked at the time with a sigh, and turned it over in his hand.
“Yes, you’re very pretty, and very valuable; but now I’ve had you six months I don’t care tuppence about you, ’specially as I don’t want to serve you as we used the old thirty-shilling silver vertical. ‘Make it ten shillings this time, Mr Dobree—do, please,’ I says, one night, ‘and I’ve got tuppence in my pocket for the ticket.’ ‘No,’ he says; ‘seven shillings—the old price; take it or leave it,’ he says. ‘Take it,’ I says. And so it went on till we lost it. Taboo—taboo!” exclaimed Richard, giving himself a tap on the mouth and putting away his timekeeper. “But I often wonder what’s become of the old watch. It was a rum one. You never knowed what it meant to do. One week it was all gain, and another all lose; and the way in which it would shake hands with itself, as if it enjoyed having such a lark, was fine, only it forgot to leave go, and the two hands went round together. Ah, well!—the cases was worth the seven shillings; so Uncle D. didn’t lose very much by the last transaction.”
The door opened, and Mrs Shingle entered, looking plump and well; and, having been very tastefully dressed by a good modiste, she was a fair example of what money will do.