An ill-looking man, in the worst sense; his
face being a mixture of cunning, meanness, and insolence. He shut the
door and came with a slow leisurely step into the middle of the room
without speaking a word. Mr. Carleton saw the blank change in Fleda's
face. She knew him.
"Do you wish to see me, Mr. McGowan?" said Mr. Ringgan, not without
something of the same change.
"I guess I ha'n't come here for nothing," was the gruff retort.
"Wouldn't another time answer as well?"
"I don't mean to find you here another time," said the man chuckling,--"I
have given you notice to quit, and now I have come to tell you you'll
clear out. I ain't a going to be kept out of my property for ever. If I
can't get my money from you, Elzevir Ringgan, I'll see you don't get no
more of it in your hands."
"Very well, sir," said the old gentleman;--"You have said all that is
necessary."
"You have got to hear a little more, though," returned the other, "I've an
idea that there's a satisfaction in speaking one's mind. I'll have that
much out of you! Mr. Ringgan, a man hadn't ought to make an agreement to
pay what he doesn't _mean_ to pay, and what he has made an agreement to
pay he ought to meet and be up to, if he sold his soul for it! You call
yourself a Christian, do you, to stay in another man's house, month after
month, when you know you ha'n't got the means to give him the rent for it!
That's what _I_ call stealing, and it's what I'd live in the County House
before I'd demean myself to do I and so ought you.
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