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Updated: May 3, 2025
"Quite right, my lad!" said Mr. Dilger, cocking a watery but sharp old eye at Horace. "Five shillings! Ah, sir, you can't know much about these hold brass antiquities to make an orfer like that." "I know as much as most people," said Horace. "But let us say six shillings." "Couldn't be done, sir; couldn't indeed.
Dutch, that is; what they used for to put their milk and such-like in." "Damn it!" said Horace, completely losing his temper. "I know what it was used for. Will you tell me what you want for it?" "I couldn't let a curiosity like that go a penny under thirty shillings," said Mr. Dilger, affectionately. "It would be robbin' myself." "I'll give you a sovereign for it there," said Horace.
He was bent, and wore rather more fluff and flue upon his person than most well-dressed people would consider necessary, but he came in with a certain air of authority, nevertheless. "Mr. Dilger, sir," piped the youth, "'ere's a gent took a fancy to this 'ere brass pot o' yours. Says he must 'ave it. Five shillings he'd got to, but I told him he'd 'ave to wait till you come in."
But in all this collection of worthless curios the brass bottle was nowhere to be seen. Ventimore went in and found a youth of about thirteen straining his eyes in the fading light over one of those halfpenny humorous journals which, thanks to an improved system of education, at least eighty per cent. of our juvenile population are now enabled to appreciate. "I want to see Mr. Dilger," he began.
Dilger to terms than because he really meant to abandon the bottle, for he dared not go back without it, and he had nothing about him just then on which he could raise the extra ten shillings, supposing the dealer refused to trust him for the balance and the time was growing dangerously short. Fortunately the well-worn ruse succeeded, for Mr.
Dilger ran out after him and laid an unwashed claw upon his coat-sleeve. "Don't go, mister," he said; "I like to do business if I can; though, 'pon my word and honour, a sovereign for a work o' art like that! Well, just for luck and bein' my birthday, we'll call it a deal." Horace handed over the coin, which left him with a few pence.
"If you say so I dare say it's correct, sir," said Mr. Dilger, without exhibiting the least confusion. "And if I did buy it off Mr. Rapkin, he's a respectable party, and ain't likely to have come by it dishonest." "I never said he did. What will you take for the thing?" "Well, just look at the work in it. They don't turn out the like o' that nowadays.
"I'm sure I'm very sorry, sir, but that you can't, because Rapkin, not wishful to have the place lumbered up with rubbish, disposed of it on'y last night to a gentleman as keeps a rag and bone emporium off the Bridge Road, and 'alf-a-crown was the most he'd give for it, sir." "Give me his name," said Horace. "Dilger, sir Emanuel Dilger.
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