“Mithter Dibble, it isn’t as I wish to be severe on you, but I begin to suspect you are drunk, thir!——drunk, drunk, drunk,” said Mrs. Dibble, laying down her needle in despair, and rapping the table with her thimble.
“You may call I what you likes,” said Dibble, with a tremendous effort to be bold; “but I’m sober enough. I wishes I were drunk.”
“Good heaventh! why, whath come to the man? How dare you wish you were drunk, thir—how dare you, thir!”
“Dare? I tell you, Maria, I’m a miserable bull, a dead-beat bull, as ever was,” said Dibble, weeping.
“You’re a beast, if that’s what you mean,” said Mrs. Dibble, convinced that her Thomas was intoxicated.
But Dibble was only suffering from the panic. He had been tempted by the financial sunshine—and Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs—and had bought the shares of a company that had made a call and failed, and of another whose shares had fallen from 10l. a share to 5l. worse than nothing. It had been brought about in this wise: Mr. Gibbs was indebted to Mr. Dibble for many little acts of courtesy and attention, as a visitor to Mr. Richard Tallant at the Iron Company’s offices. Thomas had always a chair and a polite submissive word for Mr. Gibbs, and so one day that gentleman, arguing correctly that Mr. Dibble must have saved a few hundred pounds, kindly showed that confiding porter how to make a few hundreds more; and Mr. Thomas Dibble, in the simplicity of his nature, became a bull, without the knowledge of his better-half. Whispers of the panic had come into the big company’s offices where Thomas portered it, and at last he began to understand that his five hundred pounds were tossed about in the storm, and liable to be sunk and lost for ever; and on the day in question, when Thomas went home and confessed that he was a bull in a panic, and other similarly insane things, Mr. Gibbs had explained to him his position, and advised him to consider his money lost for the present, but consoling him with stories of the immense losses which other people had suffered.
“Mr. Gibbs advised me to do it,” said Dibble.
“Do what, you fool?” shouted Mrs. Dibble, who lost all patience with him.
“Speckerlate with the five hundred pounds which we had at the bank,” said Thomas.
“We had—we had, Mithther Dibble: it wath my own money, Thomath, and you have never dared to touch it?” said Mrs. D., her face white and her eyes flashing.