"Ah, ha!—that's rather an odd idea, too!" said Tag-rag, with good-humored jocularity. "If I felt a true friendship for you as plain Titmouse, it's so likely I should have cut you just when—ahem! My dear sir! It was I that thought you wouldn't have come into my house! A likely thing, indeed!"
Titmouse was puzzled. His perceptions, never very quick or clear, were now undoubtedly somewhat obfuscated with what he had been drinking. In short, he did not understand that Tag-rag had not understood him; and felt rather baffled.
"What surprising ups and downs there are in life, Mr. Titmouse!" said Mrs. Tag-rag, respectfully—"they're all sent from above, you may depend upon it, to try us! No one knows how they'd behave, if as how (in a manner) they were turned upside down."
"I—I hope, mem, I haven't done anything to show that I"——
"Oh! my dear Titmouse," anxiously interrupted Tag-rag, inwardly cursing his wife, who, finding she always went wrong in her husband's eyes whenever she spoke a word, determined for the future to stick to her negus—"The fact is, there's a Mr. Horror here that's for sending all decent people to——. He's filled my wife there with all sorts of—— nay, if she isn't bursting with cant—so never mind her! You done anything wrong! I will say this for you—you always was a pattern of modesty and propriety—your hand, my dear Titmouse!"
"Well—I'm a happy man again," resumed Titmouse, resolved now to go on with his adventure. "And when did they tell you of it, sir?"
"Oh, a few days ago—a week ago," replied Tag-rag, trying to recollect.
"Why—why—sir—a'n't you mistaken?" inquired Titmouse, with a depressed, but at the same time a surprised air. "It only happened this morning, after you left"——
"Eh?—eh?—ah, ha!—What do you mean, Mr. Titmouse?" interrupted Tag-rag, with a faint attempt at a smile. Mrs. Tag-rag and Miss Tag-rag also turned exceedingly startled faces towards Titmouse, who felt as if a house were going to fall down on him.
"Why, sir," he began to cry, (an attempt which was greatly aided by the maudlin condition to which drink had reduced him,) "till to-day, I thought I was heir to ten thousand a-year, and it seems I'm not; it's all a mistake of those cursed people at Saffron Hill!"