" He growled in his menagerie trot within the four walls.
"But I'm, in a man's power. Will that satisfy you? You'll tell me,
because I'm rich, to snap my fingers. I can't. I've got feelings. I'm in
his power to hurt me and disgrace me. It's the disgrace--to my disgrace I
say it--I dread most. You'd be up to my reason if you had ever served in
a regiment. I mean, discipline--if ever you'd known discipline--in the
police if you like--anything--anywhere where there's what we used to call
spiny de cor. I mean, at school. And I'm," said Van Diemen, "a rank idiot
double D. dolt, and flat as a pancake, and transparent as a pane of
glass. You see through me. Anybody could. I can't talk of my botheration
without betraying myself. What good am I among you sharp fellows in
England?"
Language of this kind, by virtue of its unintelligibility, set Mr.
Herbert Fellingham's acute speculations at work. He was obliged to lean
on Van Diemen's assertion, that he had not robbed and had not murdered,
to be comforted by the belief that he was not once a notorious
bushranger, or a defaulting manager of mines, or any other thing that is
naughtily Australian and kangarooly.
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