“I’d lock him out,” retorted Gabriel, with pure irrelevancy; “I’d scotch his sheets; I’d pour water in his boots; I’d sift sand in his hair-brush; I’d spatter vitriol on his shirts.  A man who marries a woman deserves nothing better.”

He wagged his foot carelessly, took up one of the books upon the table, and looked into it indifferently.  Fanny Newt turned to her sister, who sat smiling by her side.

“What is the matter with this man?” asked Mrs. Alfred Dinks, audibly, of May.

“There is a pregnant text, my dear Mrs. Dinks, nee Newt, a name which I delight to pronounce,” said Gabriel, striking in before May could reply, with the lightest tone and the soberest face in the world, “which instructs us to answer a fool according to his folly.”

Fanny was really confounded.  She had heard Abel in old days speak of Gabriel Bennet as a spooney—­a saint in the milk—­a goodsey, boodsey, booby—­a sort of youth who would turn pale and be snuffed out by one of her glances.  She found him incomprehensible.  She owed him the first positive emotion of human interest she had known for years.

May Newt looked and listened without speaking.  The soft light glimmered in her eyes, for she knew what it all meant.  It meant precisely what her praises of Little Malacca meant.  It meant that she and Gabriel loved each other.

The junior partner was still holding the book when a heavy step was heard in the entry.  Fanny’s eyes grew darker and the frown deeper.  There was a blundering movement outside—­a hat fell—­a cane struck something—­and Gabriel knew as perfectly as if he could look through the wall what kind of man was coming.  The door opened with a burst, and Mr. Alfred Dinks stopped as his eye fell upon the company.  A heavy, coarse, red-faced, dull-eyed man, with an air of brutish obstinacy in every lineament and movement, he stared for a moment without a word or sign of welcome, and then looking at his wife, said, in a grunting, surly tone,

“Look here; don’t be fooling round.  The old man’s bust up!”

He banged the door violently to, and they heard his clumsy footsteps creaking up the stairs.

CHAPTER LX.

POLITICS.

“In course; I sez to ma—­why, Lord bless me, it must have been three or four years ago—­that ’twould all turn out so.  What’s rotten will come to pieces, ma, sez I. Every year she sez to me, sez she, why ain’t the Newts failed yet? as you said they was going to.  Jest you be quiet, sez I, ma, it’s comin’.  So ’twas.  I know’d all about it.”

President Van Boozenberg thus unburdened his mind and justified his vaticinations to the knot of gentlemen who were perpetually at the bank.  They listened, and said ah! and yes, and shook their heads; and the shaky ones wondered whether the astute financier had marked them and had said to ma, sez he, that for all they looked so bright and crowded canvas so smartly, they are shaky, ma—­shaky.