Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

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“Certainly you are—​everybody says so.”

“Look here, I aint a-goin’ to stand any o’ your cheek, blow me if I do—​no, nor any of your preaching either. What are you, I should like to know?”

“A thousand times better than you are!” exclaimed Bessie Dalton.

“Ish he?” This was said in a drawling tone and jeering manner.

“Yes, he is.”

“I’m not so sure about it. Why, Lord love yer, gal, don’t ye know what he ish—​a burglar! Do ye hear—​a burglar!”

Had a bomb-shell exploded in the room it could not possibly have caused greater consternation than did this declaration.

Peace was pale with rage.

“You infamous liar!” he exclaimed, in a voice of concentrated passion, walking up to the speaker, and shaking his fist in his face.

“Were it not that I respect your poor, ill-used wife—​were it not that you are in a beastly state of intoxication, I would fell you to the earth.”

Bristow laughed derisively.

“You—​you fell me to the earth,” he repeated, in a sneering tone.

Peace by this time was wild with fury.