"There, Mr. Levi, pray, pray, none of that," said Mr. Larkin.
The three gentlemen were standing in a row, from afar off observing the patient, with an intense scrutiny of a gloomy and, I may say, a savage kind.
"He was an unfortunate agent—no energy, except for his pleasures," resentfully resumed Mr. Larkin, who was standing furthest back of the three speculators. "Indolent, impracticable enough to ruin fifty cases; and now here he lies in a fever, contracted, you think, Mr. Levi, in some of his abominable haunts."
Mr. Larkin did not actually say "d—— him," but he directed a very dark, sharp look upon his acquaintance in the bed.
"Abawminable, to be sure, abawminable. Bah! It's all true. The hornies has their eye on him these seven weeks past—curse the beasht," snarled Mr. Levi, clenching his fists in his pockets, "and every da—a—m muff that helped to let me in for this here rotten business."
"Meaning me, sir?" said Mr. Larkin, flushing up to the top of his head a fierce pink.
Levi answered nothing, and Mr. Larkin did not press his question.
It is very easy to be companionable and good-humoured while all goes pleasantly. It is failure, loss, and disappointment, that try the sociable qualities; even those three amiable men felt less amicable under the cloud than they had under the sunshine.
So they all three looked in their several ways angrily and thoughtfully at the gentleman in the typhus fever, who said rather abruptly—
"She killed herself, sir; foolish 'oman! Capital dancing, gentlemen! Capital dancing, ladies! Capital—capital—admirable dancing. God help us!" and so it sunk again into mumbling.