“What are you the man to do?” demanded Eugene, still sternly.
“Er give up that drection.”
“Have you got it?”
With a most laborious attempt at pride and dignity, Mr. Dolls rolled his head for some time, awakening the highest expectations, and then answered, as if it were the happiest point that could possibly be expected of him: “No.”
“What do you mean then?”
Mr. Dolls, collapsing in the drowsiest manner after his late intellectual triumph, replied: “Threepenn’orth rum.”
“Wind him up again, my dear Mortimer,” said Wrayburn; “wind him up again.”
“Eugene, Eugene,” urged Lightwood in a low voice, as he complied, “can you stoop to the use of such an instrument as this?”
“I said,” was the reply, made with that former gleam of determination, “that I would find her out by any means, fair or foul. These are foul, and I’ll take them—if I am not first tempted to break the head of Mr. Dolls with the fumigator. Can you get the direction? Do you mean that? Speak! If that’s what you have come for, say how much you want.”
“Ten shillings—Threepenn’orths Rum,” said Mr. Dolls.
“You shall have it.”
“Fifteen shillings—Threepenn’orths Rum,” said Mr. Dolls, making an attempt to stiffen himself.