“No; I’ll make it so unpleasant for a certain person about some things I know that he shall be glad to lay down the hundred instead of lending it, as one brother should to another.”
The squire’s face grew dark, and the cue quivered in his grasp, as he gazed full at Tom Candlish, the brothers looking singularly alike in their anger. But the elder turned it off with a curious, unpleasant laugh, and leant over the table to make a stroke.
“Don’t be a fool, Tom,” he said, playing. “You always did have too much tongue.”
“Too much or too little, I mean to use it more, instead of submitting to the tyranny of such a mean-spirited hound as you. What the old man could have been thinking of to leave the estate to such a miserly cur—”
“Mean-spirited hound! miserly cur, eh!” paid the squire, between his teeth.
“Yes; and I repeat it,” cried Tom Candlish, who was furious with disappointment. He found that humility was useless, and that now they had begun to quarrel, his only chance of getting money was by bullying and threats; so without heeding the gathering anger in his brother’s eyes as he went on playing rapidly in turn and out of turn, he kept up his attack. “What the governor could have been thinking of, I say—”
“Leave the governor alone, Tom,” growled the squire. “He knew that if he left the money to me with the title, the estate would be kept out of the lawyers’ hands, and the money would not be found in pretty women’s laps.”
“But down your throat, you sot!” The squire looked up at him again, and he was going to make some furious retort, when the old butler’s steps were heard ascending the flight of stairs, and he entered the room.
“Can I bring anything else, Sir Luke, before I go to bed?”
“No, Smith,” said the squire; “what time is it?”