'
'After you first came to me to get your precious grandson packed
off to sea?' said Quilp.
'Shortly after that,' replied the old man. 'I thought of it a long
time, and had it in my sleep for months. Then I began. I found no
pleasure in it, I expected none. What has it ever brought me but
anxious days and sleepless nights; but loss of health and peace of
mind, and gain of feebleness and sorrow!'
'You lost what money you had laid by, first, and then came to me.
While I thought you were making your fortune (as you said you were)
you were making yourself a beggar, eh? Dear me! And so it comes to
pass that I hold every security you could scrape together, and a
bill of sale upon the--upon the stock and property,' said Quilp
standing up and looking about him, as if to assure himself that
none of it had been taken away. 'But did you never win?'
'Never!' groaned the old man. 'Never won back my loss!'
'I thought,' sneered the dwarf, 'that if a man played long enough
he was sure to win at last, or, at the worst, not to come off a
loser.'
'And so he is,' cried the old man, suddenly rousing himself from
his state of despondency, and lashed into the most violent
excitement, 'so he is; I have felt that from the first, I have
always known it, I've seen it, I never felt it half so strongly as
I feel it now.
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