"
"What do you mean, General?" said Bows.
"I mean to have his life, Bows--his villanous, skulking life, my boy;"
and he rapped upon the battered old pistol-case in an ominous and savage
manner. Bows had often heard him appeal to that box of death, with which
he proposed to sacrifice his enemies; but the Captain did not tell him
that he had actually written and sent a challenge to Major Pendennis, and
Mr. Bows therefore rather disregarded the pistols in the present
instance.
At this juncture Miss Fotheringay returned to the common sitting-room
from her private apartment, looking perfectly healthy, happy, and
unconcerned, a striking and wholesome contrast to her father, who was in
a delirious tremor of grief, anger, and other agitation. She brought in a
pair of ex-white satin shoes with her, which she proposed to rub as clean
as might be with bread-crumb: intending to go mad with them upon next
Tuesday evening in Ophelia, in which character she was to reappear on
that night.
She looked at the papers on the table; stopped as if she was going to ask
a question, but thought better of it, and going to the cupboard, selected
an eligible piece of bread wherewith she might operate on the satin
slippers: and afterwards coming back to the table, seated herself there
commodiously with the shoes, and then asked her father, in her honest,
Irish brogue, "What have ye got them letthers, and pothry, and stuff, of
Master Arthur's out for, Pa? Sure ye don't want to be reading over that
nonsense.
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