“Is that your affair, ma’am?”
“I thought you was above purse-cutting,” she said, mightily disdainful. “But it seems I was as deceived in you there as in other ways.”
“Why, you impudent bawd!” he roared in his rage, and turned her livid by the epithet.
“You vagrant muck-rake, is that a word for an honest woman?”
“Honest, you thieving drab! Do you boast yourself honest? Your cheating score gives the lie to that. Give me the total of it, that I may pay the swindling sum, and shake the dust of your tavern from my heels.”
That, as you realize, was but the beginning of a scene of which I have no mind to give you all the details. Some of them are utterly unprintable. Her voice shrilled up like an oyster-woman’s, drawing the attention of the few who occupied the common room, and fetching Tim the drawer in alarm to the door of the little parlour.
And for all his anger, Colonel Holles began to be vaguely alarmed, for his conscience, as you know, was not altogether easy, and appearances might easily be construed against him.
“You thieving, brazen traitor,” she was bawling. “Do you think to come roaring it in here at me, you that have turned my reputable house into a den of treason! I’ll learn you manners, you impudent gallow’s-bird.” And she then caught sight of Tim’s scared face looking round the opening door. “Tim, fetch the constable,” she bawled. “The gentleman shall shift his lodgings to Newgate, which is better suited to his kind. Fetch the constable, I tell you. Run, lad.”
Tim departed. So did the Colonel, realizing suddenly that there would be no profit in remaining. He emptied the half of the contents of the ducal purse into his palm, and, as Jupiter wooed Danaë, but without any of Jupiter’s amorous intention, he scattered it upon and about her in a golden shower.
“There’s to stop your noisy, scolding mouth!” he cried. “Pay yourself with that, you hag. And the devil take you!”