“By this token, though you mayn’t believe it, that a young gentleman gave me three and sixpence as I was coughing my breath away on this very grass. I asked him for three and sixpence, and he gave it me.”
“Wasn’t it a little cool to name your sum?” hints Mr. Datchery, still rattling. “Isn’t it customary to leave the amount open? Mightn’t it have had the appearance, to the young gentleman—only the appearance—that he was rather dictated to?”
“Look’ee here, deary,” she replies, in a confidential and persuasive tone, “I wanted the money to lay it out on a medicine as does me good, and as I deal in. I told the young gentleman so, and he gave it me, and I laid it out honest to the last brass farden. I want to lay out the same sum in the same way now; and if you’ll give it me, I’ll lay it out honest to the last brass farden again, upon my soul!”
“What’s the medicine?”
“I’ll be honest with you beforehand, as well as after. It’s opium.”
Mr. Datchery, with a sudden change of countenance, gives her a sudden look.
“It’s opium, deary. Neither more nor less. And it’s like a human creetur so far, that you always hear what can be said against it, but seldom what can be said in its praise.”
Mr. Datchery begins very slowly to count out the sum demanded of him. Greedily watching his hands, she continues to hold forth on the great example set him.
“It was last Christmas Eve, just arter dark, the once that I was here afore, when the young gentleman gave me the three and six.” Mr. Datchery stops in his counting, finds he has counted wrong, shakes his money together, and begins again.