if he wasn't, somebody else is
took for a rioter, and it's all over with him.'
Miss Miggs relapsed.
'Now I want,' said Dennis, 'to clear this house, and to see you righted.
What if I was to get her off, out of the way, eh?'
Miss Miggs, brightening again, rejoined, with many breaks and pauses
from excess of feeling, that temptations had been Simmuns's bane. That
it was not his faults, but hers (meaning Dolly's). That men did not see
through these dreadful arts as women did, and therefore was caged
and trapped, as Simmun had been. That she had no personal motives to
serve--far from it--on the contrary, her intentions was good towards
all parties. But forasmuch as she knowed that Simmun, if united to any
designing and artful minxes (she would name no names, for that was not
her dispositions)--to ANY designing and artful minxes--must be made
miserable and unhappy for life, she DID incline towards prewentions.
Such, she added, was her free confessions. But as this was private
feelings, and might perhaps be looked upon as wengeance, she begged the
gentleman would say no more. Whatever he said, wishing to do her duty
by all mankind, even by them as had ever been her bitterest enemies, she
would not listen to him. With that she stopped her ears, and shook her
head from side to side, to intimate to Mr Dennis that though he talked
until he had no breath left, she was as deaf as any adder.
'Lookee here, my sugar-stick,' said Mr Dennis, 'if your view's the same
as mine, and you'll only be quiet and slip away at the right time, I
can have the house clear to-morrow, and be out of this trouble.--Stop
though! there's the other.'
'Which other, sir?' asked Miggs--still with her fingers in her ears and
her head shaking obstinately.
'Why, the tallest one, yonder,' said Dennis, as he stroked his chin, and
added, in an undertone to himself, something about not crossing Muster
Gashford.
Miss Miggs replied (still being profoundly deaf) that if Miss Haredale
stood in the way at all, he might make himself quite easy on that score;
as she had gathered, from what passed between Hugh and Mr Tappertit when
they were last there, that she was to be removed alone (not by them, but
by somebody else), to-morrow night.
Mr Dennis opened his eyes very wide at this piece of information,
whistled once, considered once, and finally slapped his head once and
nodded once, as if he had got the clue to this mysterious removal, and
so dismissed i
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