"Jacob," she said, "you ought to be in bed; why are you up like that? It's three o'clock in the morning."
He began to talk very rapidly. He knew his mother perfectly well. "Mother," he said, "when bailiffs comes you willn't tell 'em where I have hid my brass; see, I've hidden it here, but you willn't tell 'em, mother?" And then he lifted up a corner of the carpet and showed his little purse.
Mrs. Ogden trembled from head to foot. "Our Jacob's crazed," she said to herself—"our Jacob's gone crazed!"
She felt too weak to remain standing, and sat down, never taking her eyes off him. He put the purse back, and covered it again with great care. Then he took his memorandum-book, and seemed to be making an entry.
"Let me look at that book," Mrs. Ogden said.
It was as she had feared. The entry was a hopelessly illegible jumble of unmeaning lines and figures.
"Hadn't you better go to bed?"
"Go to bed, mother—not if I know it!" He said this with a smile of intense cunning, and then added, confidentially, "The bailiffs are comin' to-morrow, and Baron Rothschild has bought all my property, a large price, a million sterling—a million sterling; it's Baron Rothschild that bought it, mother, for a million sterling!"
The poor old woman burst into tears. "O Jacob!" she said, "I wish you wouldn't talk so!"