his whiskers for reflection, and came out
hopeless: 'No; as adventurers we are obliged to play rash games for
chances of high winnings, and there has been a run of luck against us.'

She was resuming, 'Have you nothing--' when he stopped her.

'We, Sophronia. We, we, we.'

'Have we nothing to sell?'

'Deuce a bit. I have given a Jew a bill of sale on this furniture, and
he could take it to-morrow, to-day, now. He would have taken it before
now, I believe, but for Fledgeby.'

'What has Fledgeby to do with him?'

'Knew him. Cautioned me against him before I got into his claws.
Couldn't persuade him then, in behalf of somebody else.'

'Do you mean that Fledgeby has at all softened him towards you?'

'Us, Sophronia. Us, us, us.'

'Towards us?'

'I mean that the Jew has not yet done what he might have done, and that
Fledgeby takes the credit of having got him to hold his hand.'

'Do you believe Fledgeby?'

'Sophronia, I never believe anybody. I never have, my dear, since I
believed you. But it looks like it.'

Having given her this back-handed reminder of her mutinous observations
to the skeleton, Mr Lammle rose from table--perhaps, the better to
conceal a smile, and a white dint or two about his nose--and took a turn
on the carpet and came to the hearthrug.

'If we could have packed the brute off with Georgiana;--but however;
that's spilled milk.'

As Lammle, standing gathering up the skirts of his dressing-gown with
his back to the fire, said this, looking down at his wife, she turned
pale and looked down at the ground. With a sense of disloyalty upon
her, and perhaps with a sense of personal danger--for she was afraid of
him--even afraid of his hand and afraid of his foot, though he had never
done her violence--she hastened to put herself right in his eyes.

'If we could borrow money, Alfred--'

'Beg money, borrow money, or steal money. It would be all one to us,
Sophronia,' her husband struck in.

'--Then, we could weather this?'

'No doubt. To offer another original and undeniable remark, Sophronia,
two and two make four.'

But, seeing that she was turning something in her mind, he gathered up
the skirts of his dressing-gown again, and, tucking them under one arm,
and collecting his ample whiskers in his other hand, kept his eye upon
her, silently.

'It is natural, Alfred,' she said, looking up with some timidity into
his face, 'to think in such an emergency of the richest people we know,
an