“I’d have gone and put my head under the pump, same as you ought to this very minute!” replied Mr. Mimms, without hesitation.
“Possibly! possibly! But I, Joseph, being a man of larger vision, would have raised my price! Very likely I would have demanded not five but ten thousand pounds from him. And so he knew!”
“Are you telling us, Sam, as that young greenhorn was a Dook?” asked Mr. Shifnal incredulously.
“Look at the handkerchief! And if Joseph had but stayed within the house—”
“If I’d have known he was a Dook, which sounds to me like a bag of moonshine anyways, I’d have had more sense than to meddle with him!” declared Mr. Mimms. “That would be the way to get dished-up, that would! Why, if I’d have bored in on him we’d have very likely gone to Rumbo, the pair of us! I dunno but what it wouldn’t mean the Nubbing Cheat.”
Mr. Liversedge sat staring before him, his ingenious mind at work. “I may be wrong. All men are fallible. It may be that I am right, however, and am I the man to let opportunity slide? That shall never be said of Swithin Liversedge! This matter must be sifted! But he may already have departed from this neighbourhood. He had recovered the fatal letters: what should keep him longer at such a hostelry as the White Horse?”
Mr. Shifnal shook his head. “Nothing wouldn’t keep him any longer, Sam,” he said.
Mr. Liversedge brought his gaze to bear on his friend’s face. “Nothing,” he said, in a damped tone. “I am bound to confess—No!” He sat up with a jerk. “Belinda!” he ejaculated. “Where else did she go but to the man whom she allowed—for aught I know encouraged!—to fly from this place, leaving her protector for dead upon the floor?”
“She’d lope off with anyone, she would,” commented Mr. Mimms dispassionately. “You had only to get talking to her when you see her at Bath, and she up and loped off with you. An unaccountable game-pullet, she is!”
“It is my belief,” said Mr. Liversedge, “that she has cast herself upon his generosity! She has appealed to his chivalry! Will he thrust her away? will he refuse to aid her? He will not!”