Bridget for a crock to hide it in: mayn't one use a honey-pot, as Teddy
Rourke would say, barring the honey?"

"Ha! and so you hide the hoard up there, aunt, eh? along with the
preserves in a honey-pot, do you?"

"We'll see--we'll see, some o' these long days; not that the money's to
be yours, Nep--you're rich enough, and don't want it; there's your poor
sister Scott with her fourteen children, and Aunt Bridget must give her
a lift in life: she was a good niece to me, Simon, and never left my
side before she married: maybe she'll have cause to bless the dead."

Jennings hardly spoke a word more; but drained his glass in silence, got
up a sudden stomach-ache, and wished his aunt good-night.




CHAPTER XXIII.

SCHEMES.


WE must follow Simon Jennings to his room. He felt keenly
disappointed. Money was the idol of his heart, as it is of many million
others. He had robbed, lied, extorted, tyrannized; he had earned scorn,
ill-report, and hatred; nay, he had even diligently gone to work, and
lost his own self-love and self-respect in the service of his darling
idol. He was at once, for lucre's sake, the mean, cringing fawner, and
the pitiless, iron despot; to the rich he could play supple parasite,