Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/47

 dredged his upper left-hand waistcoat pocket, and brought up a sovereign wrapped in a pound-note. Then he waited for me to speak; but I couldn't. I got my mouth open, but couldn't get it shut again.

'I got that out of the mugs last night, but I thought that we'd want it, and might as well keep it. Quids ain't so easily picked up, now-a-days; and, besides, we need stuff mor'n Stiffner does, and so'

'And did he know you had the stuff?' I gasped.

'Oh, yes, that's the fun of it. That's what made him so excited. He was in the parlour all the time I was playing. But we might as well have a drink!'

We did. I wanted it.

Bill turned in by-and-bye, and looked like a sleeping innocent in the moonlight. I sat up late, and smoked, and thought hard, and watched Bill, and turned in, and thought till near daylight, and then went to sleep, and had a night-mare about it. I dreamed I chased Stiffner forty miles to buy his pub, and that Bill turned out to be his nephew.

Bill divvied up all right, and gave me half-a-crown over, but I didn't travel with him long after that. He was a decent young fellow as far as chaps go, and a good mate as far as mates go; but he was too far ahead for a peaceful, easy-going chap like me. It would have worn me out in a year to keep up to him.

P.S.―The name of this yarn should have been: 'Bill and Stiffner (thirdly, Jim).'