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something if I were angry."
"My dear Miss Hawkins, if you were to give out that you composed my
speech, you know very well that people would say it was only your
raillery, your fondness for putting a victim in the pillory and amusing
the public at his expense. It is too flimsy, Miss Hawkins, for a person
of your fine inventive talent--contrive an abler device than that.
Come!"
"It is easily done, Mr. Trollop. I will hire a man, and pin this page on
his breast, and label it, 'The Missing Fragment of the Hon. Mr. Trollop's
Great Speech--which speech was written and composed by Miss Laura
Hawkins under a secret understanding for one hundred dollars--and the
money has not been paid.' And I will pin round about it notes in my
handwriting, which I will procure from prominent friends of mine for the
occasion; also your printed speech in the Globe, showing the connection
between its bracketed hiatus and my Fragment; and I give you my word of
honor that I will stand that human bulletin board in the rotunda of the
capitol and make him stay there a week! You see you are premature, Mr.
Trollop, the wonderful tragedy is not done yet, by any means. Come, now,
doesn't it improve?"
Mr Trollop opened his eyes rather widely at this novel aspect of the
case. He got up and walked the floor and gave himself a moment for
reflection. Then he stopped and studied Laura's face a while, and ended
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