"Beg pardon, I'm sure, gents, but mean no offence: am monstrous obliged to you for what you've done for me--but, by Jove, it's taken me rather a-back, I own, to hear that I'm to be kept so long out of it all! Why can't you offer him, whoever he is that has my property, a slapping sum to go out at once? Gents, I'll own to you I'm most uncommon low--never so low in my life--devilish low! Done up, and yet it seems a'n't to get what's justly mine! What am I to do in the meanwhile? Consider _that_, gents!" "You are rather excited just now, Mr. Titmouse," said Mr. Quirk, seriously; "suppose we now break up, and resume our conversation to-morrow, when we are all in better and calmer trim?" "No, sir, thanking you all the same; but I think we'd better go on with it now," replied Titmouse, impetuously. "Do you think I can stoop to go back to that nasty, beastly shop, and stand behind that odious counter?--I'd almost as lieve go to the gallows!" "Our _decided_ opinion, Mr. Titmouse," said Mr. Quirk, emphatically--his other partners getting graver and graver in their looks--"that is, if our opinion is worth offering"---- "That, by Jove! remains to be seen," said Titmouse, with a pettish shake of the head. "Well, such as it is, we offer it you; and it is, that for many reasons you must continue, for a little while longer, in your present situation"---- "What! own Tag-rag for my master--and I worth £10,000 a-year?" interrupted Titmouse, furiously. "My dear sir, you've not _got_ it yet," said Mr. Quirk, with a very bitter smile. "Do you think you'd have told me what you have, if you weren't sure that I _should_, though? No, no! you've gone too far, by Jove!--but I shall burst, I shall! Me to go on as before!--they use me worse and worse every day. Gents, you'll excuse me--I hope you will; but business is business, gents--it is; and if you won't do mine, I must look out for them that will--'pon my soul, I must, and"--If Mr. Titmouse could have seen, or having seen, appreciated, the looks which the three partners interchanged, on hearing this absurd, ungrateful, and insolent speech of his--the expression that flitted across their shrewd faces; that was, of intense contempt for him, hardly overmastered and concealed by a vivid perception of their own interest, which was, of course, to _manage_, to soothe, to conciliate him! How the reptile propensities of his mean nature had thriven beneath the sudden sunshine of unexpected prosperity!--See already his selfishness, truculence, rapacity, in full play! "So, gents," said he, after a long and keen expostulation with them on the same subject, "I'm really to go to-morrow morning to Tag-rag and Co.'s, and go on with the cursed life I led there to-day, all as if nothing had happened--ha, ha, ha!--I do so like that!"