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Here it is, by the table-leg. Take twenty-four shillings for it, now that old Rodriguez is gone?" Mr. Whitmore thanked the speaker as the coin was restored to him. "The room's hot, as Mr. Rogers says, and I think I'll step out for a mouthful of fresh air. Phe ew!" he drew a long breath as he appeared at the window.
He approached the sofa, but before throwing himself into one of its inviting corners, manlike he placed one of the large sofa pillows rather gingerly on the floor against a table-leg. Behind the pillow appeared the book. "Hello," he exclaimed, "what's this?" And he held it up. I put out my hand. "I'll take it, thank you," I said.
I thought at first that the old wretch had quarreled with her about you on account of the suit, and she had squared up to him, and he had struck her; but now I believe he had the diamonds, and she got them from him in some way, and he struck her with the missing table-leg. If you say so, I'll have him arrested.
Pressing down the end of the lever nearest the wall, an inch would bring the wires in the cross-piece on the other end of the lever against the legs of the table, and slightly raise the latter. One of the wires would strike the table-leg a very little before the other did, and that enabled the "medium" to very nicely rap time to the tunes that were sung or played.
He had kept his eyes glued to the table-leg in speaking, and so saw neither his hearer's involuntary start at the damaging disclosure, nor the nervous tightening of the hand that lay along the arm of the chair. Mahony sat silent, balancing a paper-knife, and fighting down a feeling of extraordinary discomfort his very finger-tips curled under the strain.
I took yet another step and struck my foot against a hard object on the floor; and, as I bent to examine this, something sharp and exceeding painful thrust itself into my groin a table-leg, upturned. Recovering myself, I passed a hand over it. Yes, undoubtedly it was a table-leg and the table lay topsy-turvy. But how came it so? Who had upset it, and why?
Gwen was immediately interested in the repair of the table. Why shouldn't it be done while Mrs. Picture was away, before she came back? A momentary frenzy of irrelevance seized Sapps Court, and a feverish desire to fix the exact date when the table-leg was disintegrated. "It wasn't broke, when it came from Skillicks," said Mrs. Burr. "That's all I know!
Gwen took back the dog's chain from the table-leg, and the low thunder died down. She hardly analysed her own motives. One may have been to touch the heart of the brute, if he had one; another to convince him, without a long parley, of his mother's death. He might have disputed it, and in any case she could not have refused him the sight of his own mother's body.
Picture a new table-leg, and you can't do it without opening her desk. And you can't get the key from her without saying why you want it. Isn't that it?" Universal assent. "Very well, then! You get the lock opened, and I'll take everything out with my own hands, and keep it safe for Mrs. Picture when she comes back." This proposal was welcomed with only one reservation.
"And besides," said Nicot, naively, "you kicked my shin cruelly." "What! I thought it was the table-leg! It is my turn to apologise. You no longer crave my blood?" "No, Monsieur," sadly. Every one laughed. Maître le Borgne, wiped his perspiring forehead and waited for the orders which were likely to follow this amicable settlement of the dispute; and bewailed not unwisely.
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