When Ghost Meets Ghost

by William De Morgan

Uncle Mo said:—"If you'd said you was a-coming with it, mate, I'd have made a p'int of having the cash ready. My salary's doo to-morrow." He was looking rather ruefully at an insufficient sum in the palm of his hand, the scrapings of more than one pocket.

The young man said:—"It's the Governor, Mr. Moses. But if you'll square the 'ire of the trolley, I'll run it back to the shop, and you can say when you're ready for it."

Uncle Mo seemed very reluctant to allow the bird to go back into the bush. He went to the stairfoot, and called to Aunt M'riar, upstairs, making ribbons into rosettes, and giving Dolly the snippings. He never took his eye off the coins in his palm, as though to maintain them as integral factors of the business in hand. "Got any small change, M'riar?" said he.

"How much do you want, Mo?"

"Six. And three. Can you do six-and three?"

"Stop till I see, Mo." Aunt M'riar descended from above, and went into her bedroom. But she did not find six-and-three. For she came out saying:—"I can't only do five-and-nine, Mo. Can't you make out with that?"

Uncle Mo still looked at the twelve-and-nine he already had in hand, as though it was a peculiar twelve-and-nine, that might consent for once to make nineteen shillings, the sum required, when added to Aunt M'riar's contribution; but he was obliged to yield to the inflexible nature of Arithmetic. "Sixpence short, I make it," said he. Then to the young man whose employer was like Mont Blanc:—"You'll have to fetch it round again to-morrow, any time after two o'clock." This was, however, rendered unnecessary by the appearance of Mr. Jerry, who was able to contribute the six-and-three, without, as he said, going to the workhouse. So Mrs. Prichard's old table, with a new leg so nobody could ever have told, and a touch of fresh polish as good as new, was restored to its old place, to join in the general anticipation of its owner's return.

But however M'riar come to be so short of cash Uncle Mo, smoking an afternoon pipe as of old with Mr. Jerry, could not say, not if the Emperor of Roosher was to ask him. Not that shortness of cash was unusual in Sapps Court, but that he had supposed that M'riar was rather better off than usual, owing to recent liquidations by the firm for whom she and Mrs. Burr were at work upstairs. Mr. Jerry urged him on no account to fret his kidneys about mundane trifles of this sort. Everything, without exception, came to the same thing in the end, and weak concessions to monetary anxiety only provided food for Repentance.

Uncle Mo explained that his uneasiness was not due to ways and means, or the want of them, but to a misgiving that Aunt M'riar's money was "got from her."

Now in his frequent confabs with Mr. Jerry, Uncle Mo had let fall many suggestions of the sinister influence at work on Aunt M'riar; and Mr. Jerry, being a shrewd observer, and collating these suggestions with what had come to him otherwise, had formed his own opinions about the nature of this influence. So it was no wonder that in answer to Uncle Mo he nodded his head very frequently, as one who not only assents to a fact, but rather lays claim to having been its first discoverer. "What did I tell you, Mo?" said he.