“For you.”
“Why, o’ course I know that ,” said Riderhood, as arguing something that was self-evident. “O’ course I know very well as no man in his right senses would suppose as anythink would make me give it up agin when I’d once got it. But what do you want for it?”
“I don’t know that I want anything for it. Or if I do want anything for it, I don’t know what it is.” Bradley gave this answer in a stolid, vacant, and self-communing manner, which Mr. Riderhood found very extraordinary.
“You have no goodwill towards this Wrayburn,” said Bradley, coming to the name in a reluctant and forced way, as if he were dragged to it.
“No.”
“Neither have I.”
Riderhood nodded, and asked: “Is it for that?”
“It’s as much for that as anything else. It’s something to be agreed with, on a subject that occupies so much of one’s thoughts.”
“It don’t agree with you ,” returned Mr. Riderhood, bluntly. “No! It don’t, t’otherest Governor, and it’s no use a lookin’ as if you wanted to make out that it did. I tell you it rankles in you. It rankles in you, rusts in you, and pisons you.”
“Say that it does so,” returned Bradley with quivering lips; “is there no cause for it?”
“Cause enough, I’ll bet a pound!” cried Mr. Riderhood.
“Haven’t you yourself declared that the fellow has heaped provocations, insults, and affronts on you, or something to that effect?