Old Anthony gave Rhoda a pat on the shoulder.

CHAPTER III

“Pipes in the middle of the day’s regular revelry,” ejaculated Anthony, whose way of holding the curved pipe-stem displayed a mind bent on reckless enjoyment, and said as much as a label issuing from his mouth, like a figure in a comic woodcut of the old style:—­“that’s,” he pursued, “that’s if you haven’t got to look up at the clock every two minutes, as if the devil was after you.  But, sitting here, you know, the afternoon’s a long evening; nobody’s your master.  You can on wi’ your slippers, up wi’ your legs, talk, or go for’ard, counting, twicing, and three-timesing; by George!  I should take to drinking beer if I had my afternoons to myself in the city, just for the sake of sitting and doing sums in a tap-room; if it’s a big tap-room, with pew sort o’ places, and dark red curtains, a fire, and a smell of sawdust; ale, and tobacco, and a boy going by outside whistling a tune of the day.  Somebody comes in.  ‘Ah, there’s an idle old chap,’ he says to himself, (meaning me), and where, I should like to ask him, ’d his head be if he sat there dividing two hundred and fifty thousand by forty-five and a half!”

The farmer nodded encouragingly.  He thought it not improbable that a short operation with these numbers would give the sum in Anthony’s possession, the exact calculation of his secret hoard, and he set to work to stamp them on his brain, which rendered him absent in manner, while Mrs. Sumfit mixed liquor with hot water, and pushed at his knee, doubling in her enduring lips, and lengthening her eyes to aim a side-glance of reprehension at Anthony’s wandering loquacity.

Rhoda could bear it no more.

“Now let me hear of my sister, uncle,” she said.

“I’ll tell you what,” Anthony responded, “she hasn’t got such a pretty sort of a sweet blackbirdy voice as you’ve got.”

The girl blushed scarlet.

“Oh, she can mount them colours, too,” said Anthony.

His way of speaking of Dahlia indicated that he and she had enough of one another; but of the peculiar object of his extraordinary visit not even the farmer had received a hint.  Mrs. Sumfit ventured to think aloud that his grog was not stiff enough, but he took a gulp under her eyes, and smacked his lips after it in a most convincing manner.

“Ah! that stuff wouldn’t do for me in London, half-holiday or no half-holiday,” said Anthony.

“Why not?” the farmer asked.

“I should be speculating—­deep—­couldn’t hold myself in:  Mexicans, Peroovians, Venzeshoolians, Spaniards, at ’em I should go.  I see bonds in all sorts of colours, Spaniards in black and white, Peruvians—­orange, Mexicans—­red as the British army.  Well, it’s just my whim.  If I like red, I go at red.  I ain’t a bit of reason.  What’s more, I never speculate.”

“Why, that’s safest, brother Tony,” said the farmer.