“Then you don’t doubt my honour?”
“No, no—certainly not.”
“Oh, very well, I thought you didn’t mean it.”
Gray was then liberated from the grasp which came within one degree of suffocation, and he said,—
“I will be candid with you. I have forty pounds with me, which I will divide as you propose.”
“Forty? Humph! It’s d—d little; but I hate all grumbling. We can’t have more than a cat and her skin, say I.”
“No, certainly,” said Gray. “I didn’t understand you at first you see, or I should never have for a moment hesitated.”
“Oh, it’s all right—it’s all right. Never say die, sink me.”
“That’ll be ten pounds each,” remarked Gray, who really, as we know, had a very large sum about him—a sum so large indeed as materially to have inconvenienced him in his race down the Strand.
“So it will,” replied the man. “Now, you know the rules, my covey, as well as I do, I dare say?”