“I understand, Mrs. Gillingwater; but be reasonable. How can you expect me to pay you five-and-twenty pounds for what may be gammon after all?”
“Five-and-twenty pounds, Mr. Rock! No such thing, indeed: it is fifty pounds I want, every farthing of it, or you get nothing out of me.”
“Fifty pounds!” answered Samuel; “then I don’t think that we need talk no longer, Mrs. Gillingwater, seeing that I ain’t going to give you fifty pounds, no, not for the address of all the angels in heaven.”
“I dare say not, Mr. Rock: they’d be precious little use to you when you’d got them, either now or at any future time, to judge from what I knows of you”—and she glanced significantly at the sculptured demons beneath the ceiling—“but you see Joan’s whereabouts is another matter, more especially since she isn’t an angel yet, though she’s been nigh enough to it, poor dear.”
“What do you mean by that, ma’am? Is she ill, then?”
“When I’ve got the fifty pounds in my pocket, Mr. Rock, I’ll be glad enough to tell you all about it, but till then my mouth is sealed. Indeed, it’s a great risk that I run letting you know at all, for if the old man yonder finds it out, I think that he’ll be the ruin of me. And now, will you pay, or won’t you?”
“I won’t give you the fifty pounds,” he answered, setting his teeth; “I’ll give you thirty, and that’s the last farthing which you’ll screw out of me—and a lot of money too, seeing that there’s no reason why I should pay you anything at all.”
“That’s just where you’re wrong, Mr. Rock,” she answered: “not that I’m denying that thirty pounds is a lot of money; but then, you see, I’ve got that to sell that you want to buy, and badly. Also, as I told you, I take risks in selling it.”
“What risks?”
“The risks of being turned out of house and home, and being sold up, that’s all. Old Levinger don’t want no one to know Joan’s address; I can’t tell you why, but he don’t, and if he finds out that I have let on, it will be a bad business for me. Now look here: I fancy that there is another person as wouldn’t mind giving a trifle for this address, and if you’re so mean that you won’t cash up, I shall take a walk out yonder to-morrow morning,” and she nodded in the direction of Rosham.