The next time you show yourself inside the gates here,
you shall be driven off with the dogs and the wagoner's whip."
As Rigg pronounced the last words he turned round and looked
at Raffles with his prominent frozen eyes. The contrast
was as striking as it could have been eighteen years before,
when Rigg was a most unengaging kickable boy, and Raffles was
the rather thick-set Adonis of bar-rooms and back-parlors. But
the advantage now was on the side of Rigg, and auditors of this
conversation might probably have expected that Raffles would retire
with the air of a defeated dog. Not at all. He made a grimace
which was habitual with him whenever he was "out" in a game;
then subsided into a laugh, and drew a brandy-flask from his pocket.
"Come, Josh," he said, in a cajoling tone, "give us a spoonful of brandy,
and a sovereign to pay the way back, and I'll go. Honor bright!
I'll go like a bullet, _by_ Jove!"
"Mind," said Rigg, drawing out a bunch of keys, "if I ever see you again,
I shan't speak to you. I don't own you any more than if I saw a crow;
and if you want to own me you'll get nothing by it but a character
for being what you are--a spiteful, brassy, bullying rogue."
"That's a pity, now, Josh," said Raffles, affecting to scratch
his head and wrinkle his brows upward as if he were nonplussed.
"I'm very fond of you; _by_ Jove, I am! There's nothing I like
better than plaguing you--you're so like your mother, and I must
do without it.
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