Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/497

Rh What, however, was my brother Uriah's astonishment to see Robinson stalk in the next day, his tall figure having to stoop at every door, and in his brusque, noisy way go up to Mrs. Tattenhall, and shaking her hand as you would shake the handle of a pump, congratulate her on her arrival in the colony.

"A lucky hit, madam, a most lucky, scientific hit! Ah! trust Tattenhall for knowing what he is about."

Mrs. Tattenhall stood with a singular expression of wonder and bewilderment on her countenance, for the condition of the place, and the condolings of several female neighbors who had dropped in in Uriah's absence, had induced her to believe that they had made a fatal move of it.

"Why, sir," said she, "what can you mean, for, as I hear, the place is utterly ruined, and certainly it looks like it?"

"Ruined! to be sure it is, at least the people are, more's the pity for me, and the like of me who have lost everything; but for Tattenhall, who has everything to gain, and money to win it with, why it is the golden opportunity, the very thing! If he had watched at all the four corners of the world, and for a hundred years, he could not have dropped into such a chance. Ah! trust Tattenhall, make me believe he did not plan it." Thrusting his knuckles into Uriah's side, and laughing with a thunder-clap of a laugh that seemed to come from lungs of leather.

"Why, look here now," he continued, drawing a chair and seating himself on its front edge; "look here now, if you had come six months ago, you could have bought nothing except out of the fire. Town allotments, land, houses, bread, meat, sugar, everything ten times the natural price: and, now! cheap, dog cheap! of no value at all, you might have them for asking for; nay, I could go into a dozen deserted shops, and take any quantity for nothing. And property! why three thousand pounds cash would almost buy all the place—all the colony."

"What is the use," asked Mrs. Tattenhall, "of buying a ruined colony?"

"A ruined colony!" said Robinson, edging himself still more forward in his chair, and seeming actually to sit upon nothing, his huge figure and large ruddy face