He omitted the definite article before each of the substantives, as is a common habit with his countrymen when at all excited.
"A bit o' paper," he repeated, "between stuff and linin'! I'll rip t' waistcoat open and see what 'tis."
He took his clasp-knife from his pocket, carefully unripped a part of one of the seams in the waistcoat, and extracted a piece of paper folded double,—a decent-sized square of rather thick paper, partly printed, partly written.
He leaned over the light with his elbows on the table and read the contents of this paper, slowly and laboriously, following every word with his thick forefinger, sometimes stopping a long time upon one syllable, sometimes trying back half a line or so, but always plodding patiently with his ugly forefinger.
When he came to the last word, he burst suddenly into a loud chuckle, as if he had just succeeded in guessing that difficult enigma which had puzzled him all the evening.
"I know it all now," he said. "I can put it all together now. His words; and hers; and the money. I can put it all together, and make out the meaning of it. She's going to give him the two thousand pound to go away from here and say nothing about this."
He refolded the paper, replaced it carefully in its hiding-place between the stuff and lining of the waistcoat, then searched in his capacious pocket for a fat leathern book, in which, amongst all sorts of odds and ends, there were some needles and a tangled skein of black thread. Then, stooping over the light, he slowly sewed up the seam which he had ripped open,—dexterously and neatly enough, in spite of the clumsiness of his big fingers.