“Now I could buy that man up a hundred times over,” grumbled Barclay as he walked away, richer by many pounds than when he started on his journey that morning; “but he always seems to set me down; to look upon me with contempt; and young Richard is as high and mighty as can be. Ah, well, wait a bit!—‘Can you oblige me with fifty pounds, Mr Barclay, on my note of hand?’—and then p’raps they’ll be more civil.
“Things ain’t pleasant though, just now. One house made notorious by a murder, and me letting a couple of actresses lodge in another. Well, they pay regular, and I dare say she’ll make a good match somewhere before long; but I’m afraid, when the old lady gets to know they’re stage people, there’ll be a bit of a breeze.”
Volume One—Chapter Twenty One.
Dick Catches Shrimps.
There was quite a little crowd at the end of the pier to see Fisherman Dick and some others busy with boathooks searching for the fragments of Cora Dean’s pony carriage, and for want of something better to stare at, the fastening of a rope to first one pair of wheels and then to the other, and the hauling ashore, formed thrilling incidents.
Two rich carriage-cloaks were cast ashore by the tide, miles away, and the rug was found right under the pier, but there were several articles still missing. Cora’s reticule, containing her purse and cut-glass scent-bottle; a little carriage-clock used by Mrs Dean, who was always very particular about the lapse of time, and that lady’s reticule and purse.
It was Fisherman Dick’s special task to search for them when the tide was low, and this he did by going to work as a setter does in a field, quartering the ground and hunting it all over to and fro.
But Fisherman Dick did his work with a shrimping-net, and one day he took home the little carriage-clock and showed it to his wife.