“Who’s in a passion? How do you know I’m in a passion? I don’t believe you saw the man at all, and there’s an end of it.”
“Upon my conscience—”
“Bother your conscience—you’ve got none.”
“Why, now you saw his things lying by the side of the pond yourself. What—suppose now he’s drowned himself really. How you’d look then. Why don’t you have the pond dragged—you know nobody will drag it for me.”
“Why don’t you get in and feel about for him?” suggested the man with the gun.
“What?”
“Get into the pond and see if he’s there, I say.”
“And put my foot on him perhaps. I’d sooner go to Jericho. I should never recover it. Suppose I was to go in, and put my foot on his very face. Oh, oh!”
“You are a coward, that’s what you are, and you may hunt the fellow yourself for all I care.”
“Don’t go away,” cried the bill-sticker. “Why—why—”