Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/210

200 younger man, quietly, as if not to be heard by the other.

"Be you hungry, then?" queried Alec with surprise. "Miss Elms don't keep her lobster on the parlour floor, though for the matter of that, it's clean enough to eat 'em off."

"It's empty, man," replied Dick; adding to himself—"With paper worth fifty thousand pounds."

Passing out by way of the kitchen. Alec observed on the floor the very tin. He saw that it had been rudely closed and contained paper.

"The rogues have been fighting for this," muttered the old man, picking it up and putting it into his pocket. He said to himself as he departed—"I'll take care of it for them. I wish to God some other man than that dog Elms was a-going with the master to-morrow. The Lord preserve him!"