I don't mind tellin' you now, I'd me shootin'-iron here"
--he touched his right hip--"an' if you'd refused--you was the third,
mind you,--I'd have drilled you where you stood, God damn me if I
wouldn't!"
Mahony eyed the speaker with derision. "Much good that would have done
your wife, you fathead! Well, well, we'll say nothing to MINE, if you
please, about anything of that sort."
"No, may all the saints bless 'er and give 'er health! An' as I say,
doctor. . . ." In speaking he had drawn a roll of bank-notes from his
pocket, and now he tried to stuff them between Mahony's fingers.
"What's this? My good man, keep your money till it's asked for!" and
Mahony unclasped his hands, so that the notes fluttered to the ground.
"Then there let 'em lay!"
But when, in clothes dried stiff as cardboard, Mahony was rolling
townwards--his coachman, a lad of some ten or twelve who handled the
reins to the manner born--as they went he chanced to feel in his coat
pocket, and there found five ten-pound notes rolled up in a neat bundle.
The main part of the road was dry and hard again; but all dips and holes
were wells of liquid mud, which bespattered the two of them from top to
toe as the buggy bumped carelessly in and out. Mahony diverted himself
by thinking of what he could give Polly with this sum. It would serve to
buy that pair of gilt cornices or the heavy gilt-framed pierglass on
which she had set her heart. He could see her, pink with pleasure,
expostulating: "Richard! What WICKED extravagance!" and hear himself
reply: "And pray may my wife not have as pretty a parlour as her
neighbours?" He even cast a thought, in passing, on the pianoforte with
which Polly longed to crown the furnishings of her room--though, of
course, at least treble this amount would be needed to cover its cost.
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