"Yes," groaned Poole, "but that can't go on for ever; and, besides, you
promised that you would leave me in peace as soon as I had got Darrell to
provide for you."

"So I will. Zounds, sir, do you doubt my word? So I will. But I don't
call exile 'a provision'--Basta! I understand from you that Colonel
Morley offers to restore the niggardly L200 a year Darrell formerly
allowed to me, to be paid monthly or weekly, through some agent in Van
Diemen's Land, or some such uncomfortable half-way house to Eternity,
that was not even in the Atlas when I studied geography at school. But
L200 a year is exactly my income in England, paid weekly too, by your
agreeable self, with whom it is a pleasure to talk over old times.
Therefore that proposal is out of the question. Tell Colonel Morley,
with my compliments, that if he will double the sum, and leave me to
spend it where I please, I scorn haggling, and say 'done.' And as to the
girl, since I cannot find her (which, on penalty of being threshed to a
mummy, you will take care not to let out), I would agree to leave Mr.
Darrell free to disown her. But are you such a dolt as not to see that I
put the ace of trumps on my adversary's pitiful deuce, if I depose that
my own child is not my own child, when all I get for it is what I equally
get out of you, with my ace of trumps still in my hands? Basta!--I say
again Basta! It is evidently an object to Darrell to get rid of all fear
that Sophy should ever pounce upon him tooth and claw: if he be so
convinced that she is not his daughter's child, why make a point of my
saying that I told him a fib, when I said she was? Evidently, too, he is
afraid of my power to harass and annoy him; or why make it a point that I
shall only nibble his cheese in a trap at the world's end, stared at by
bushmen, and wombats, and rattlesnakes, and alligators, and other
American citizens or British settlers! L200 a year, and my wife's father