"Oh! _nephew_? Yes--another generation--yes, of course. I called to see the Honourable Kiffyn Fulke Verney. I was not able to attend the consultation, or whatever you call it. You know I'm your principal witness, eh? Dingwell's my name."
"Oh, to be sure--I beg pardon, Mr. Dingwell," said Cleve, who, by one of those odd slips of memory, which sometimes occur, had failed to connect the name with the case, on its turning up thus unexpectedly.
"I hope your admirable uncle, Kiffyn Verney, is, at all events, _alive_ and _approachable_," said the old man, glancing grimly about the room; "though perhaps _you_'re his next heir, and the hope is hardly polite."
This impertinence of Mr. Dingwell's, Mr. Cleve Verney, who knew his importance, and had heard something of his odd temper, resented only by asking him to be seated.
"_That_," said the old man, with a vicious laugh and a smirk, also angry, "is a liberty which I was about to take uninvited, by right of my years and fatigue, eh?"
And he sat down with the air of a man who is rather nettled than pleased by an attention.
"And what about Mr. Kiffyn Verney?" he asked, sharply.
"My uncle is in the country," answered Cleve, who would have liked to answer the fool according to his folly, but he succumbed to the necessity, inculcated with much shrewdness, garnished with some references to Scripture, by Mr. Jos. Larkin, of indulging the eccentricities of Mr. Dingwell's temper a little.
"Then he _is_ alive? I've heard such an account of the Verneys, their lives are so brittle, and snap so suddenly; my poor friend Arthur told me, and that Jew fellow, Levi, here, who seems so intimate with the family--d--n him!--says the same: no London house likes to insure them. Well, I see you don't like it: no one does; the smell of the coffin, sir; time enough when we are carrion, and fill it. Ha, ha, ha!"
"No young man likes the sight of that stinking old lantern-jawed fellow, who shall be nameless, looking over his spade so slily; but the best way is to do as I've done. Since you must meet him _one_ day, go up to him, and make his acquaintance, and shake hands; and egad! when you've grown a little bit intimate, he's not half so disgusting, and sometimes he's even a little bit funny."