“He has not exactly rescued the money as you say; but if you will pay attention to me for a few minutes, I will explain the case.”
“Thertainly, I will pay attention with great pleathure, and more particularly as you theem to have thome good news, you do nurse it so carefully, for if it was bad you would have out with it at wonth.”
“No, it is not good news: it is bad news and good news together.”
“Well, so that the good ith uppermotht, I can put up with a little bad,” said Mrs. Dibble, proceeding to readjust one of the little jaunty curls that ornamented each side of her fair fat face.
She had not lost all those red and white and chubby charms which had attracted poor old Dibble in those early days of his London situation; but she was not so rosy nor so fat, nor so well dressed as she was when we saw her strumming out the “Old Hundredth” at that little square piano in Still Street; neither was she so demonstrative, nor yet quite so overbearing in her manner. But she still presumed upon her boarding-school education, and the high position of her pa as a builder, and the matrimonial offers she had had before she condescended to marry Thomas Dibble.
“Your husband, Mrs. Dibble, edged on by your taunts about your losses, and his own affection for you, has appropriated three hundred pounds.”
“Appropriated,” said Mrs. Dibble; “a fine word, thir, and one as I remember well to have written over and over again at boarding-school, but I am not quite clear about the exact meaning of it.”
“Prepare to hear the very worst news possible, Mrs. Dibble, and then I will tell you what it means.”
“Don’t, thir; O don’t, thir!” said Mrs. Dibble. “I know now, I know; Thomas is a thief, I know. Yeth, yeth; I thee it all!”
“Don’t agitate yourself,” said the detective; “pray be calm. I have good news to come as well,—very good news.”