wi' your legs, talk, or go for'ard, counting, twicing, and three-
timesing; by George! I should take to drinking beer if I had my
afternoons to myself in the city, just for the sake of sitting and doing
sums in a tap-room; if it's a big tap-room, with pew sort o' places, and
dark red curtains, a fire, and a smell of sawdust; ale, and tobacco, and
a boy going by outside whistling a tune of the day. Somebody comes in.
"Ah, there's an idle old chap," he says to himself, (meaning me), and
where, I should like to ask him, 'd his head be if he sat there dividing
two hundred and fifty thousand by forty-five and a half!"

The farmer nodded encouragingly. He thought it not improbable that a
short operation with these numbers would give the sum in Anthony's
possession, the exact calculation of his secret hoard, and he set to work
to stamp them on his brain, which rendered him absent in manner, while
Mrs. Sumfit mixed liquor with hot water, and pushed at his knee, doubling
in her enduring lips, and lengthening her eyes to aim a side-glance of
reprehension at Anthony's wandering loquacity.

Rhoda could bear it no more.

"Now let me hear of my sister, uncle," she said.

"I'll tell you what," Anthony responded, "she hasn't got such a pretty
sort of a sweet blackbirdy voice as you've got."

The girl blushed scarlet.

"Oh, she can mount them colours, too," said Anthony.

His way of speaking of Dahlia indicated that he and she had enough of one