“Every blessed thing gone, boy. Why, Rodney, my lad, we have fallen into a den of thieves—robbed, and we may thank our stars we haven’t been murdered!”
“Why, it’s horrid, uncle! Didn’t you hear them, then?”
“Hear them, no! I heard nothing till you knocked something off on to the floor. Here, stop a moment, boy! My purse! It was in my trousers pocket.”
“Then it’s gone, uncle,” cried Rodd.
“Ah! Horror! My gold watch and seals!”
“Well, they weren’t in your trousers, uncle.”
“No, boy; I remember winding it up and laying it on the chimney-piece.”
“It isn’t there, uncle.”
“My gold presentation watch, that I wouldn’t have lost for five hundred pounds! Call up that wretched woman.”
“Uncle, I can’t!”