doctrine! Why, who would know we wore any linen at all next our skin, unless we exposed it when washed over the side of the wessel? Now you come here. I have a bone to pick along with you, George!"
To be on a level with her son, and stare him full in the eyes, a way she had with everyone she assailed, she sat on the table, and put her feet on the chair.
"What has become of the money? I have been to the box, and there are twenty pounds gone out of it, all in gold. I haven't took it, so you must have. Now I want to know what you have done with it. I will have it out. I endure no evasions. Where is the money? Fork it out, or I will turn all your pockets inside out, and find and retake it. You want no money, not you. I provide you with tobacco. Where is the money? Twenty pounds, and all in gold. I was like a shrimp in scalding water when I went to the box to-day and found the money gone. I turned that red you might have said it was erysipelas. I shruck out that they might have heard me at the City. Turn your pockets out at once."
George looked abashed; he was cowed by his mother. "I'll take the carving-knife to you!" said the woman, "if you do not hand me over the cash at once."
"Oh, don't, pray don't hurt him! " cried Phœbe, interposing her arm, and beginning to cry.
"Dear sackalive!" exclaimed Mrs. De Witt, "I am not aiming at his witals, but at his pockets. Where is the money?"
"I have had it," said Mehalah, stepping forward and standing between De Witt and his mother. "George has behaved generously, nobly by us. You have heard how we were robbed of our money. We could not have paid our rent for the Ray had not George let us have twenty pounds. He shall not lose it."
"You had it, you!—you!" cried Mrs. De Witt in wild and fierce astonishment. "Give it up to me at once."
"I cannot do so. The greater part is gone. I paid the money to-day to Rebow, our landlord."
"Elijah has it! Elijah gets everything. My father left me without a shilling, and now he gets my hard-won earnings also."
