its odour to have brought it,
for convenience of carriage, in a rum-cask.
'Now Dolls, wake up!'
'Mist Wrayburn? Drection! Fifteen shillings!'
After carefully reading the dingy scrap of paper handed to him, and as
carefully tucking it into his waistcoat pocket, Eugene tells out the
money; beginning incautiously by telling the first shilling into Mr
Dolls's hand, which instantly jerks it out of window; and ending by
telling the fifteen shillings on the seat.
'Give him a ride back to Charing Cross, sharp boy, and there get rid of
him.'
Returning to the dining-room, and pausing for an instant behind the
screen at the door, Eugene overhears, above the hum and clatter, the
fair Tippins saying: 'I am dying to ask him what he was called out for!'
'Are you?' mutters Eugene, 'then perhaps if you can't ask him, you'll
die. So I'll be a benefactor to society, and go. A stroll and a cigar,
and I can think this over. Think this over.' Thus, with a thoughtful
face, he finds his hat and cloak, unseen of the Analytical, and goes his
way.
BOOK THE FOURTH -- A TURNING
Chapter 1
SETTING TRAPS
Plashwater Weir Mill Lock looked tranquil and pretty on an evening in
the summer time. A soft air stirred the leaves of the fresh green trees,
and passed like a smooth shadow over the river, and like a smoother
shadow over the yielding grass. The voice of the falling water, like
the voices of the sea and the wind, were as an outer memory to a
contemplative listener; but not particularly so to Mr Riderhood, who sat
on one of the blunt wooden levers of his lock-gates, dozing. Wine must
be got into a butt by some agency before it can be drawn out; and the
wine of sentiment never having been got into Mr Riderhood by any agency,
nothing in nature tapped him.
As the Rogue sat, ever and again nodding himself off his balance, his
recovery was always attended by an angry stare and growl, as if, in the
absence of any one else, he had aggressive inclinations towards himself.
In one of these starts the cry of 'Lock, ho! Lock!' prevented his
relapse into a doze. Shaking himself as he got up like the surly brute
he was, he gave his growl a responsive twist at the end, and turned his
face down-stream to see who hailed.
It was an amateur-sculler, well up to his work though taking it easily,
in so light a boat that the Rogue remarked: 'A little less on you, and
you'd a'most ha' been a Wagerbut'; then went to work at his windla
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