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You could say that you have found me quick-like in this matter; couldn't you, Sir John? Bagwax was truly happy in the love of Jemima Curlydown; but the idea of earning two hundred pounds for furniture, and of seeing distant climes at the same time, had taken a strong hold of his imagination. 'I am afraid I should have no voice in the matter, unless with the view of getting evidence.
Bagwax was well aware that Curlydown was instigated solely by envy. But still, these were his own convictions, and Bagwax was in truth a soft-hearted, conscientious man. 'I do think it ought to be enough for any Secretary of State, said he, 'and I'll go to Sir John Joram to-morrow. Of course, I should like to see the world; who wouldn't?
But the Queen's head, with all its obliterating smudges, and all its marks and peculiarities, were to be seen quite as plainly as on the original, which was tied up carefully among the archives of the trial. 'You see that postage-stamp? Curlydown took his glass, and looked at the document, and declared that he saw the postage-stamp very plainly. 'But it does not tell you anything particular?
I have eighteen Mays '73, and not one of them could have been made by the stamp that did this. As he spoke thus, he rapped his finger down on the copy of the sacred envelope which he was using. 'Is not that conclusive? 'If it was not conclusive to keep a man from going to prison, said Curlydown, remembering the failure of his own examination, 'it will not be conclusive to get him out again.
The proposed journey to Sydney, with a pound a-day allowed for expenses, and the traveller's salary going on all the time, would put a nice sum of ready-money into Bagwax's pocket. 'It wouldn't be less than two hundred towards furnishing my boy, said Curlydown. 'You'll want it. And as for the delay, what's six months? Girls like to have a little time to boast about it.
Curlydown was still engaged in the routine ordinary work of the day, seeing that the proper changes were made in all the stamps used during the various hours of the day, assuring himself that the crosses and letters and figures upon which so much of the civilisation of Europe depended, were properly altered and arranged.
And it may well be that his own labours were made heavier by the devotion of his colleagues to other matters. And yet from time to time Bagwax would ask him questions, never indeed taking his advice, but still demanding his assistance. Curlydown was not naturally a man of ill-temper or an angry heart. But there were moments in which he could hardly abstain from expressing himself with animosity.
'Nothing very particular at the first glance, said Curlydown, gazing through the glass with all his eyes. 'Look again. 'I see that they obliterate out there with a kind of star. 'That has nothing to do with it. 'The bunch of hair at the back of the head isn't quite like our bunch of hair. 'Just the same; taken from the same die, said Bagwax.
'You have got it all your way, said Curlydown, without lifting his head. 'And then, as you said just now, I don't understand. 'I'd tell you everything if you'd only be a little less hard. Curlydown was envious.
It had been arranged that he was to start on his great journey in the first week in September, and he employed his time before he went in scanning all the envelopes bearing the Sydney postmark which he had been able to procure in England. He spent the entire day with a magnifying-glass in his hand; but as Curlydown was also always armed in the same fashion, that was not peculiar.
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