“Now, Tom,” replied the other, in that kind of contemptuous familiarity which slavish minions or adroit knaves like Norton must always put up with from such men, “now, Tom, my good fellow, you know the case is this—you get the agency to the Cullamore property the moment my right honorable dad makes his exit. If he should delay that exit for seven years to come, then you will be exactly seven years short of the period in which you will fleece me and my tenants, and put the wool on yourself.”
“Only your tenants, my lord, if you please. I may shear them, a little, I trust; but you can't suppose me capable of shearing—”
“My lordship. No, no, you are too honest; only you will allow me to insinuate, in the meantime, that I believe you have fleeced me to some purpose already. I do not allude to your gambling debts, which, with my own, I have been obliged to pay; but to other opportunities which have come in your way. It doesn't matter, however; you are a pleasant and a useful fellow, and I believe that although you clip me yourself a little, you would permit no one else to do so. And, by the way, talking of the respectable old peer, he is anything but a friend of yours, and urged me strongly to send you to the devil, as a cheat and impostor.”
“How is that, my lord?” asked Norton, with an interest which he could scarcely disguise.
“Why, he mentioned something of a conversation you had, in which you told him, you impudent dog—and coolly to his face, too—that you patronized his son while in France, and introduced him to several distinguished French noblemen, not one of whom, he had reason to believe, ever existed except in your own fertile and lying imagination.”
“And was that all?” asked Norton, who I began to entertain apprehensions of Morty O'Flaherty; “did he mention nothing else?”
“No,” replied Dunroe; “and you scoundrel, was not that a d—d deal too much?”
Norton, now feeling that he was safe from Morty, laughed very heartily, and replied,
“It's a fact, sure enough; but then, wasn't it on your lordship's account I bounced? The lie, in point of fact, if it can be called one, was, therefore, more your lordship's lie than mine.”
“How do you mean by 'if it can be called one'?”