"Good heavens!" roared the major from the threshold. "You now play
tricks on me, do you? I'm sent to the roundabout and told that you
never came here, and yet all the while here you are, addling your silly
brains."
Burle shuddered, pushing the grog away, while Melanie stepped angrily
in front of him as if to shield him with her portly figure, but Laguitte
looked at her with that quiet, resolute expression well known to women
who are familiar with bodily chastisement.
"Leave us," he said curtly.
She hesitated for the space of a second. She almost felt the gust of
the expected blow, and then, white with rage, she joined Phrosine in the
outer room.
When the two men were alone Major Laguitte walked up to Burle, looked at
him and, slightly stooping, yelled into his face these two words: "You
pig!"
The captain, quite dazed, endeavored to retort, but he had not time to
do so.
"Silence!" resumed the major. "You have bamboozled a friend. You palmed
off on me a lot of forged receipts which might have sent both of us to
the gallows. Do you call that proper behavior? Is that the sort of trick
to play a friend of thirty years' standing?"
Burle, who had fallen back in his chair, was livid; his limbs shook as
if with ague.
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