sixpences; and you'll be throwing away hundreds. And then the expensive tastes you've got! Nothing good enough for you now. I'm sure you sometimes think yourself King Solomon. But that comes of making money—if, indeed, you have made any—without earning it. No; I don't talk nonsense: people can make money without earning it. And when they do, why it's like taking a lot of spirits at one draught; it gets into their head, and they don't know what they're about. And you're in that state now, Mr. Caudle: I'm sure of it, by the way of you. There's a tipsiness of the pocket as well as of the stomach—and you're in that condition at this very moment.
"Not that I should so much mind—that is, if you have made money—if you'd stop at the Eel-Pie line. But I know what these things are: they're like treacle to flies: when men are well in 'em, they can't get out of 'em: or, if they do, it's often without a feather to fly with. No: if you've really made money by the Eel-Pie line, and will give it to me to take care of for the dear children, why, perhaps, love, I'll say no more of the matter. What?
"Nonsense?
"Yes, of course: I never ask you for money, but that's the word.
"And now, catch you stopping at the Eel-Pie line! Oh no; I know your aggravating spirit. In a day or two I shall see another fine flourish in the paper, with a proposal for a branch from Eel-Pie Island to the Chelsea Bun-house. Give you a mile of rail, and—I know you men—you'll take a hundred. Well, if it didn't make me quiver to read that stuff in the paper,—and your name to it! But I suppose it was Mr. Prettyman's work; for his
