me!" says Benjamin's mother, changing the subject on a sudden,
and twisting back with a horrid, greedy quickness to those awkward money-
matters which she had broached down in the parlour. "What we've done,
one way and another for Mr. Forley, it isn't in words to tell! That nice
little bit of business of ours ought to be a bigger bit of business,
considering the trouble we take, Benjamin and me, to make the imp
upstairs as happy as the day is long. If good Mr. Forley would only
please to think a little more of what a deal he owes to Benjamin and me--"

"That's just it," says Trottle, catching her up short in desperation, and
seeing his way, by the help of those last words of hers, to slipping
cleverly through her fingers. "What should you say, if I told you that
Mr. Forley was nothing like so far from thinking about that little matter
as you fancy? You would be disappointed, now, if I told you that I had
come to-day without the money?"--(her lank old jaw fell, and her
villainous old eyes glared, in a perfect state of panic, at that!)--"But
what should you say, if I told you that Mr. Forley was only waiting for
my report, to send me here next Monday, at dusk, with a bigger bit of
business for us two to do together than ever you think for? What should
you say to that?"

The old wretch came so near to Trottle, before she answered, and jammed
him up confidentially so close into the corner of the landing, that his
throat, in a manner, rose at her.

"Can you count it off, do you think, on more than that?" says she,
holding up her four skinny fingers and her long crooked thumb, all of a
tremble, right before his face.

"What do you say to two hands, instead of one?" says he, pushing past
her, and getting down-stairs as fast as he could.

What she said Trottle thinks it best not to report, seeing that the old
hypocrite, getting next door to light-headed at the golden prospect
before her, took such liberties with unearthly names and persons which
ought never to have approached her lips, and rained down such an awful
shower of blessings on Trottle's head, that his hair almost stood on end
to hear her. He went on down-stairs as fast as his feet would carry him,
till he was brought up all standing, as the sailors say, on the last
flight, by agravating Benjamin, lying right across the stair, and fallen
off, as might have been expected, into a heavy drunken sleep.

The sight of him instantly reminded Trottle of the curiou