ushing--No!
that may suit your thin dapper light Hop-o'-my-thumbs! Look at me! See
how I have increased in weight the last five years--all solid bone and
muscle. I defy any four draymen to move me an inch if I am not in the
mind to it; and to be blown off to the antipodes as if I were the down
of a pestilent thistle, I am not in the mind for that, Dolly Poole!"

"Hum!" said Poole, trying to smile. "This is funny talk. You always
were a funny fellow. But I am quite sure, from Colonel Morley's decided
manner, that you can get nothing from Darrell if you choose to remain in
England."

"Well, when I have nothing else left, I may go to Darrell myself, and
have that matter out with him. At present I am not up to it. Dolly,
don't bore!" And the bravo, opening a jaw strong enough for any
carnivorous animal, yawned--yawned much as a bored tiger does in the
face of a philosophical student of savage manners in the Zoological
Gardens.

"Bore!" said Poole, astounded and recoiling from that expanded jaw.
"But I should have thought no subject could bore you less than the
consideration of how you are to live?"

"Why, Dolly, I have learned to be easily contented, and you see at
present I live upon you."

"Yes," groaned Poole, "but that can't go on for ever; and, besides, you
promised that you would leave me in peace as soon as I had got Darrell
to provide for you."

"So I will. Zounds, sir, do you doubt my word? So I will. But I don't
call exile 'a provision'--Basta! I understand from you that Colonel
Morley offers to restore the niggardly L200 a year Darrell formerly
allowed to me, to be paid monthly or weekly, through some agent in Van
Diemen's Land, or some such uncomfortable half-way house to Eternity,
that was not even in the Atlas when I studied geography at school. But
L200 a year is exactly my income in England, paid weekly too, by your
agreeable self, with whom it is a pleasure to talk over old times.
Therefore that proposal is out of the question. Tell Colonel Morley,
with my compliments, that if he will double the sum, and leave me to
spend it where I please, I scorn haggling, and say 'done.' And as to the
girl, since I cannot find her (which, on penalty of being threshed to
a mummy, you will take care not to let out), I would agree to leave Mr.
Darrell free to disown her. But are you such a dolt as not to see that I
put the ace of trumps on my adversary's pitiful deuce, if I depose
that my own child is not my own chi