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"Ay, I hear ye, young man, a-laughing at your own sport," said Maxley, winking his eye; "but 'tain't the biggest mouth as catches the most. At this sudden turn of Mr. Maxley's wit, light and playful as a tap of the old English quarter-staff, they were a little staggered; all but Edward, who laughed and supplied him zealously with sandwiches.
"I never saw a plainer case of Incubation," remarked Dr. Wycherley with vast benevolence of manner. "Maxley's?" "Oh, no; that is parochial. It is your profoundly interesting son I alluded to. Did you notice his supercilious departure? And his morbid celerity of repartee?" Mr. Hardie replied with some little hesitation, "Yes; and, excuse me, I thought he had rather the best of the battle with you."
The room was nearly full of terrified neighbours: Sampson shouldered them all roughly out of his way, and there, on a bed, lay Maxley's gaunt figure in agony.
"Now do you really think your two lives are worth a guinea? Why, it's 252 pence! 1008 farthings!" The pair affected disappointment vilely. At all events, he must accept this basket of gudgeons Maxley had brought along. Being poisoned was quite out of Maxley's daily routine, and had so unsettled him, that he had got up, and gone fishing to the amazement of the parish. Sampson inspected the basket.
"Oh, it is a mortal disease," replied Sampson, as cool as a cucumber. "She has got angina pictoris or brist-pang, a disorder that admirably eximplifies the pretinsions of midicine t' seeince." And with this he dashed into monologue. Maxley's tall gaunt form came slouching in, and traversed the floor, pounding it with heavy nailed boots. He seated himself gravely at Mrs.
"Deevelich ill," cried Sampson heartily. "For two physicians, like a pair of oars, Conduck him faster to the Styjjin shores."* * Garth. Julia looked him in the face, and coldly ignored this perversion of Mrs. Maxley's meaning; and Mrs. Dodd returned pertinaciously to the previous topic. "Mr. Alfred Hardie interests me; he was good to Edward. I am curious to know why you call him a puppy?"
"Henry, score James Maxley's name off the books," said Skinner with cool dignity. But when he had said this, he was at his wits' end: there were not nine hundred pounds of hard cash in the bank, nor anything like it. SKINNER called "young" because he had once had a father on the premises was the mole-catcher.
Such is human nature in general, and Maxley's in particular, that the L. 900 in pocket seemed small, and the 30s. in jeopardy large. "I can't afford to go with the creditors," argued Maxley: "Dividend on 30s.! Why, that will be about thirty pence: the change for a hard* half-crown. *I.e. a half-crown in one piece. He stuck his spade in the soil and made for his debtor's house.
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