"You don't think the young scamp's going to turn round on us, and snap his fingers in our face, eh?" inquired Mr. Quirk, apprehensively, violently twirling about his watch-key.
"If you leave him implicitly to me, you shall get all you want," replied Gammon, very gravely, and very pointedly. Quirk's color changed a little, as he felt the keen gray eye of Gammon fixed upon him, and he involuntarily shrank under it.
"You'll excuse me, Gammon," at length said he, with rather a disturbed air; "but there's no fathoming you, when you get into one of your mysterious humors; and you always look so particularly strange whenever we get on this subject! What can you know that I don't—or ought not to know?"
"Nothing—nothing, I assure you," replied Gammon, with a gay smile.
"Well, I should have thought not. But, coming back to the main point, if one could but touch some part of that same ten thousand pounds, I should be a happy man!—Consider Gammon, what a draught there has been on my purse for this last sixteen months! Ecod!—the sleepless nights it has cost me!"
"Well, can you doubt being soon richly repaid, my dear sir? Only don't be too hasty."
"I take it, Gammon, we've a lien on the rents now in the banker's hands, and to become due next quarter-day, and on the first instalment of the mesne profits, both for our bill of costs, and in respect of that same bond?"
"Mesne profits, Mr. Quirk?" echoed Gammon, rather quickly; "you seem to take it for granted that they are all ready to be paid over! Even supposing Titmouse not to grow restive, do you suppose it probable that Mr. Aubrey, after so vast and sudden a sacrifice, can have more than a very few thousands—probably hundreds—to keep him and his family from immediate want, since we have reason to believe he has got no other resources than Yatton?"
"Not got 'em—not got 'em? D—n him! then he must look sharp and get 'em, that's all! You know we can't be trifled with; we must look after the interests of—Titmouse. And what's he to start with, if there's no mesne profits forthcoming? But, hang it! they must; I should say a gentle pressure, by-and-by, as soon as Aubrey's fairly got out of Yatton, must produce money, or security—he must know quantities of people of rank and substance that would rush forward, if they once heard him squeal"——
"Ah, you're for putting the thumbscrews on at once—eh?" inquired Gammon, with subdued energy, and a very strange sort of smile.