“Confound you! will you let me speak?” cried Richard angrily.
“Of course, sir. Glad to hear you speak, and sorry I come at an inconvenient time, when you were busy with your music; and—let me see—didn’t Mr Mark say something about your wanting the cash to buy a new pianner? Or was it an old fiddle? I quite forget, sir; that I do.”
“Will you be silent a minute? Did my cousin say that money was for me?”
“Oh, yes, sir; or I shouldn’t have—”
“Then it was a lie—an abominable lie!” cried Richard, in a rage. “Sign those papers and acknowledge that I had the money? No! So you can be off, and tell him so.”
Mr Isaac Simpson screwed up his face, bent over the table, and carefully spread the three oblongs of blue paper out, one above the other, holding the ends down, and smoothing them out slowly.
“Well,” cried Richard, hotly, “do you hear what I say?”
“Oh, yes, Sir Richard Frayne, Baronet, I hear what you say,” replied the tailor: “but I was a-thinking, sir.”
“Then go and think somewhere else.”
“No, sir; I can’t do that, because, you see, I’m thinking about you. Here’s ’undred and eighty-odd pound of a poor man’s hard-earned money, most part of which you owe me.”