Bernard Capes

“ The tea-broker rose, the other with him.
"Good day," said the former.
You will give me—us—no hope whatever?" pleaded the suitor desperately.
"Young man," said Mr. Huggins grimly, "you may have heard, or you may not have heard, of a neighbour of mine called Matcham. But I won't be hard on you. Come to me at any time with the assurance that you've earned by your wits as much as a hundred pounds in a single day, and I'll reconsider your case." ”

“ Huggins, to be frank—home, was found and cross-examined to no purpose—by the defaulter himself, that is to say. But to others he told, in self-defence, a dark and, paradoxically, an illuminating tale of an inebriated fare who, deposited at the gates of his own drive, wrestled for some time unavailingly with the simple latch of a swing gate, and finally, having mastered it, tacked his way housewards by a series of cannons from tree to tree. Then appeared an advertisement, offering a reward of two hundred pounds for the recovery of the jewels, and no questions asked. ”

“ Dalrymple gazed at him a moment, wrung his hand fervently but respectfully, and departed in the greatest depression.
"He's not a bad chap, and well connected, too," mused Mr. Huggins, standing in the middle of the room when the door was shut; "but—all that pretence, boots and things, on nothing—and then to go and plead Matcham——!" ”

“ He must go to the rescue of the old man. Besides, if he could help to clear Tom-Tiddler's ground——!
In his agitation, becoming suddenly conscious of his incriminating spud, he thrust the thing in a panic up the right leg of his trousers, and stuck the end into his sock. Thus besplintered, he made anyhow for the enclosure, and, crossing the chain like a man on stilts, danced up to connect himself with the defence. That, gasping red anathema, was already, it seemed, on the verge of apoplexy.
"Ha, Dalrymple!" shouted Huggins; "I know who's work this is! What the devil, man! ”

“ While she gazes in silence, we will slip in a parenthesis.
Mr. Huggins and Mr. Matcham—the latter proprietor-editor of The United Family magazine—were brother masons, near neighbours on Brixted Common, and deadly enemies in spite of everything. Their mutual hostility turned upon a question of land-grabbing. Mr. Huggins had arrogantly enclosed within posts and rails a strip of public green, situated beyond the haw-haw which terminated his front lawn on the Common side, and Mr. Matcham. a furious democrat, had called him a thief in consequence. ”

“ A bluff insistence on the proverbial inadequacy of clothes to prove the gentleman was his solitary refuge from a self-consciousness of his own thick inelegance, and the general incompetency of tailors to better it. ”

“ Mr. Huggins, near as dishevelled as himself, and infinitely redder, suddenly stood before him, his hands behind his back.
"You've caught it," he said. "Good Lord, man, nobody would take you for a gentleman to see you now. Well, I'm obliged to you, and to this evidence of what you came for."
With a quick action he brought the broken pieces of the spud from behind his back.
"You didn't find the disc?" he said, with a grin.
Archie shook his head.
"No," went on the tea-broker; "and so you're as far as ever, you see, from earning your hundred pounds in a day. O! ”

“ Therefore he was sarcastic at the expense of his visitor's name and boots, and insulting in his use of the only counter-check at his command to all which they implied. Impecuniosity, the young man must learn, was not the less subject, because patrician, to the dictatorialness of wealth. ”