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"Thackeray is about to publish a new work in numbers, a serial, as the newspapers call it. Novelists of all shades are plying their trades. Husbands are killing their wives in every day's newspaper. Burglars are peaching against each other; there is no longer honor among thieves.
As for turning away folk from my door, I might as well plug up the ale-tap, and pull down the sign and as for peaching, and such like, the squire will find the folk here are as honest to the full as those he brings with him. 'How, you impudent lump of tallow, said Nixon, 'what do you mean by that?
"Now, if you please, we'll stop talking pretty and get down to brass tacks. Buck up, now, and answer my questions. And don't be afraid; I'm holding no great grudge for what you did this afternoon. I appreciate pluck and grit as much as anybody, I guess, though I do think you ran it pretty close, peaching on a pal after you'd lifted the jewels. By the way, why did you do it?"
As soon as the door was closed, Rushbrook's long-repressed anger could no longer be restrained: he started on his feet, and striking his fist on the table so as to terrify his wife, swore that the pedlar should pay dear for his peaching. Upon his wife's demanding an explanation, Rushbrook, in a few hurried sentences, explained the whole.
"I'm sorry to come to that, master," said he: "as long as we were both upon honour together, it was very well; but, if you break squares with me, being a gentleman, and rich, you can't take it ill, I being a poor man and my place and all at stake, if I take the shortest way to get my own: I must go to Dr. B. for justice, if you won't give it me without my peaching," said the coachman.
"That's the very thing I doubt, Jack," he whispered. "I don't like the thoughts of peaching on a shipmate, but when villains are plotting treachery, as some on board here are doing, we have but one duty to perform. I must carry the information to the captain.
"Yes, I've kept still, because you failed in your crooked scheme, and because well, because I wasn't anxious to have it known that I bet the way I did, and I knew you'd retaliate by peaching on me if I breathed a word concerning you." Herbert laughed and coughed at the same time. "Just so. Wise boy. I certainly should have done just that.
That youth evidently seemed to expect that his speech would produce a far deeper impression than it did, for he looked quite angry when Stephen made no reply. "Wretched little sneak!" the amiable one continued; "I suppose he'll go peaching to his big brother. Never mind, we'll pay you out, see if we don't!
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