United States or Belize ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It had not been his habit to laugh much at Boxall Hill. It was there he kept his wife, and Mr Winterbones, and the brandy bottle behind his pillow. He had not often there found it necessary to assume that loud and cheery laugh. On this occasion he was apparently well in health when he got home; but both Lady Scatcherd and Mr Winterbones found him more than ordinarily cross.
"Indeed, now, Scatcherd, you ain't; you're bad enough if you only knew it. And as for Winterbones, he has no business here up in your bedroom, which stinks of gin so, it does. Don't you believe him, doctor; he ain't well, nor yet nigh well."
Well, I have had a sharpish bout of it, as her ladyship there no doubt has told you. Let her alone to make the worst of it. But, you see, you're too late, man. I've bilked the old gentleman again without troubling you." "Anyway, I'm glad you're something better, Scatcherd." "Something! I don't know what you call something. I never was better in my life. Ask Winterbones there."
Scatcherd began to think that the doctor might now as well go away and leave him to the society of Winterbones and the brandy; but, much as our friend had before expressed himself in a hurry, he now seemed inclined to move very leisurely. He sat there by the bedside, resting his hands on his knees and gazing unconsciously at the counterpane.
But no sooner had the cob begun to move on the gravel-sweep before the house, than one of the upper windows opened, and the doctor was summoned to another conference with the sick man. "He says you are to come back, whether or no," said Mr Winterbones, screeching out of the window, and putting all his emphasis on the last words. "Thorne! Thorne!
I have added a postscript a codicil they call it saying that you, and you only, know who is her eldest child. Winterbones and Jack Martin have witnessed that." Dr Thorne was going to explain how very injudicious such an arrangement appeared to be; but Sir Roger would not listen to him. It was not about that that he wished to speak to him.
"It wasn't because I'm ill that I sent for you, or rather let her ladyship send for you. Lord bless you, Thorne; do you think I don't know what it is that makes me like this? When I see that poor wretch, Winterbones, killing himself with gin, do you think I don't know what's coming to myself as well as him? "Why do you take it then? Why do you do it? Your life is not like his. Oh, Scatcherd!
"Bother," said Sir Roger. "Well, Scatcherd; I must do my duty to you, whether you like it or not." "That is to say, I am to pay you for trying to frighten me." "No human nature can stand such shocks as these much longer." "Winterbones," said the contractor, turning to his clerk, "go down, go down, I say; but don't be out of the way. If you go to the public-house, by G , you may stay there for me.
Get out of the room, Winterbones," he then said, gruffly, as though he were dismissing from his chamber a dirty dog. Winterbones, not a whit offended, again hid his cup under his coat-tail and vanished. "Sit down, Thorne, sit down," said the contractor, speaking quite in a different manner from any that he had yet assumed. "I know you're in a hurry, but you must give me half an hour.
Winterbones, when the above ill-natured allusion was made to the aroma coming from his libations, might be seen to deposit surreptitiously beneath the little table at which he sat, the cup with which he had performed them. "I think Mr Winterbones had better go back to the London office," said he. "Lady Scatcherd will be your best clerk for some time, Sir Roger."
Word Of The Day