“Do I allow it? Do I allow it?”
“You allow it. He could, therefore, do what he likes with his share?”
“Dot vhas right.”
“Do you know that he wished a church to be built as a memorial to his mother, who was your wife, I believe?”
“Dot vhas very beautiful. But he vhas dead, und dot vill vhas not vorth the ink it took to write out. I vhas next of kin, und I takes my poor stepson’s share.”
When he had said this, my uncle and I spoke together; and from this moment began an altercation which I should need a volume to embody. Tulp lost his temper; my uncle roared at him; I, too, being furious with the meanness of the wretched little beast, often found myself bawling as though I were in a gale of wind. Tulp’s threats flew fast and furious. Uncle Joe snapped his fingers under his long nose, and defied him in a voice hoarse and failing with exertion. I began to see the idleness and the absurdity of all this, and, throwing open the parlor door, I exclaimed:
“Mr. Tulp, get you back to Amsterdam, and there sit and reflect. When you come into our way of thinking, write; and then fetch your money. Go to law, if you please. The Spanish consignees of the dollars will thank you.”
The perspiration poured from the little man’s face, and he trembled violently. His yellow complexion under the pressure of his temper, which often forced his voice into a shriek, had changed into several dyes of green and sulphur, like that of one in a fit. He stared wildly about him in search of his strange little hat, which, however, he forgot he had already snatched up and was holding.
“You’ll have to bear a hand with your decision,” cried my uncle, whose face looked almost as queer as Tulp’s, with its purple skin and blue lips; “they’re beginning to ask questions about the brig, and if you don’t send for her soon she’ll be going a-missing. You know what I mean. The Goodn’s are handy, and my nephew aint going to forfeit his rightful share of the dollars because of her. The recovery of this silver is to be more than a salvage job to Bill. There’s nigh upon forty thousand pounds belonging to you a-lying in my cellars, but if ye aren’t quick in fetching it something may happen to oblige me to send all them chests out of my house, and then it’ll be no business of mine to larn what’s become of ’em.”
The little Dutchman, now perceiving that he held his hat, clapped it on his head and ran out of the room.