"Now, uncle Zachariah, thee shall pay me what thee owes me, or be turned over to some other creditor!"
I looked upon her in astonishment, and began to fancy I was in a dream.
"What!" said my friend Ebenezer, "don't you know my little Ellen?" And thereupon he added other expressions, but what they were I retain no remembrance of, my wits being utterly amazed and confounded.
To make my confusion still greater, the door suddenly opened, and in rushed my nephew Jonathan, dressed, like a dandy of the first water, in a blue cloth coat with shining buttons, white trousers, and satin waistcoat, and exclaiming "Bravo!" and "Victoria!" as if a very demon of joy and exultation possessed him. As soon as he beheld me he ran forward, snatched one of my hands from the maiden, and, dropping on his knees, cried, with a comical look of contrition,—
"Forgive me all my sins, uncle Zachariah, and I'll behave better for the future."
"Oh thou ungrateful wretch!" said I, "how canst thou look me in the face, having ruined me?"
"Don't say so!" cried Ellen Wild; "you don't know how Jonathan has saved you."
"The deuse he don't!" said Jonathan, jumping up; "why then we've got the play all wrong. I say, uncle, don't look so solemn and wrathful. You are no more ruined than I am, and you are out of the clutches of the harpy!"
"Haven't I been swindled?" said I.
"Unutterably!" said Jonathan; "but, as the swindler has been swindled also, there's no great harm done. Uncle Zachariah, a'n't you satisfied Abel Snipe is a rascal?"