"Oh! my dear Mr. Quirk, spare me that cutting irony of yours. Surely when I have made the sincere and humiliating submission to which you have been listening—but, to return to business. I assure you that I think we ought to lose not a moment in getting in our balance, or at least coming to some satisfactory and definite arrangement concerning it. Only pinch him, and he'll bleed freely, depend on it."
"Ah, ha! Pinch him, and he'll bleed! That's my thunder, Gammon, ah, ha, ha!—By Jove! that's it to a T!—I always thought the fellow had blood enough in him if we only squeezed him a little. So let Snap be off and have a writ out against Master Aubrey."
"Forgive me, my dear Mr. Quirk," interrupted Gammon, blandly—"we must go very cautiously to work, or we shall only injure ourselves, and prejudice our most important—and permanent interests. We must take care not to drive him desperate, poor devil, or he may take the benefit of the act, and"——
"What a cursed scamp he would be to"——
"Certainly; but we should suffer more than he"——
"Surely, Gammon, they'd remand him! Eighteen months at the very least."
"Not an hour—not a minute, Mr. Quirk," said Gammon, very earnestly.
"The deuce they wouldn't? Well, Law's come to a pretty point! And so lenient as we've been!"
"What occurs to me as the best method of procedure," said Gammon, after musing for a moment—"is, for you to write a letter to him immediately—civil but peremptory—just one of those letters of yours, my dear sir, in which no living man can excel you—suaviter in modo, fortiter in re, Mr. Quirk."