"Take 'm out to-morrow, Jacob; all for Jacob! Hush--sh--sh!"

Jacob, to whom this once indifferent brother had all at once become a
sort of sweet-tasted fetish, stroked David's best coat with his adhesive
fingers, and then hugged him with an accompaniment of that mingled
chuckling and gurgling by which he was accustomed to express the milder
passions. But if he had chosen to bite a small morsel out of his
beneficent brother's cheek, David would have been obliged to bear it.

And here I must pause, to point out to you the short-sightedness of human
contrivance. This ingenious young man, Mr. David Faux, thought he had
achieved a triumph of cunning when he had associated himself in his
brother's rudimentary mind with the flavour of yellow lozenges. But he
had yet to learn that it is a dreadful thing to make an idiot fond of
you, when you yourself are not of an affectionate disposition: especially
an idiot with a pitchfork--obviously a difficult friend to shake off by
rough usage.

It may seem to you rather a blundering contrivance for a clever young man
to bury the guineas. But, if everything had turned out as David had
calculated, you would have seen that his plan was worthy of his talents.
The guineas would have lain safely in the earth while the theft was
discovered, and David, with the calm of conscious innocence, would have
lingered at home, reluctant to say good-bye to his dear mother while she
was in grief about her guineas; till at length, on the eve of his
departure, he would have disinterred them in the strictest privacy, and
carried them on his own person without inconvenience. But David, you
perceive, had reckoned without his host, or, to speak more precisely,
without his idiot brother--an item of so uncertain and fluctuating a
character, that I doubt whether he would not have puzzled the astute