“Worse and worse,” says the nurse: “if you use them to guns, you’ll never get them to work a jot; and banishing the trade is worse than banishing the men.”
“A tenfold madness has seized your pericranium,” says John; “do you think that nobody can make broad cloth but cowards; or that a fellow won’t work, because he knows he can defend the fruits of his labour? You have no objection to the taking as many of my tradesmen as you can get, to make game-keepers of them; and because they work none, you imagine that every fellow who takes a firelock in his hand to defend himself and me, is to be idle too. Don’t the game-keepers themselves work when they are allowed, and are paid for it? have not I known them give money to their overseers, for leave to work at their own trades? and many a good penny has been got in that way. As my people are useful to me, and to themselves, I intend that they shall work in safety, and that nobody shall insult an honest tradesman of mine, whilst they and I have breath in our bodies. Do what you will, you shall never get me disgraced as you have done, with your idle jaw and nonsensical trash.”
“Bless me,” says the nurse, “what a wild project you have got in your head! You’ll tell me you want to defend your house and your estate; but to what purpose keep your estate, if you cannot find time, so much as to eat a bit of warm victuals; hurried late and early, banged, soused and drenched in all weathers, and this for fear that Lewis Baboon should turn you out of your possessions; and what matter who has your possessions, if you cannot sit down to enjoy them? Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.”
“Hey-day,” says John, “your humble servant, Latin! I remember you of old.” “But goody,” says he, “I knew you lived among the boys; but don’t think to palm upon me as a commendation of eating and drinking and cowardice, what the old boy for whom I have so often been whipped, damn him, has said against a fellow who would forfeit his honour to preserve his life.”
“Well then,” says the nurse, “see how you can keep your bargain with Sir Thomas. What will he say, when he sees your house swarming with pistols and carabines, and cutlasses? you know that he does not chuse to trust any body in this house with gun-powder, except the game-keeper.”
“Blood-and-wounds,” says John, “you are more mindful of Sir Thomas than you are of me. I have heard nothing from you these twenty years, but Sir Thomas does not like this, and Sir Thomas does not like that. I was advised to take Sir Thomas into the management of my affairs, because Squire Geoffrey endeavoured to get a game-keeper of his own, and do what he pleased about my house. And now you tell me, that Sir Thomas and the game-keeper are the only people to be trusted. Those gentlemen, it seems, will trust nobody else, and who the devil will trust them? I never knew any of those suspicious people, that was much to be trusted himself. Ill doers are ill dreaders, as my sister Peg says. Odso, if Sir Thomas does not think himself safe in my parlour with me and my children, he must know of something worse than I thought of. Who was it that brought him about the house? Have not I done all that lay in my power for him? And now you and he won’t let me defend myself, because he won’t trust me. I love Sir Thomas; I mean, that he shall have the disposal of all the arms about my house, and he shall find that I am his friend, when Hubble-bubble and you are in your graves, and all the nonsense you are perpetually putting in his head and mine, is not worth a curse.”
CHAP. VII.
What happened after this conversation with the Nurse.
Who was listening to all this discourse, but the very boy George himself, whom the nurse was so much afraid of? This youngster, instead of loitering about the kitchen or the nursery, flattering the cook-maid, or the nurse, for slops and tit-bits between meals, was perpetually rambling about in quest of some diversion without doors. He had procured a pistol and a gun, and powder and shot, all which he hid in the hay-stack, or in crannies of the barn wall. You would think that he minded nothing but climbing walls, and scrambling over hedges; but no sooner did he see two or more people serious about any thing, than he forgot all his play, came to listen, as he did to this conversation between John and his nurse, and gave such attention, that there were few articles relating to the family, of which he had not an excellent notion; and could see the folly and ridicule of people, who thought themselves over wise, as well as another: he was a perfect plague to the nurse, who hated a joke, and was often put downright mad with his dry wipes and arch sayings. He no sooner heard John talk in the peremptory manner above related, than he ran away to Mrs. Bull as fast as his legs could carry him, and told her all that her husband had said, and a great deal more of his own, without mincing the matter in the least, by which he convinced her that John was not then in an humour to be crossed, and that whether she liked the project or no, it was best to put a good face upon the matter.
Every body knows that John had devolved great part of his business upon Mrs. Bull; no tradesman’s bill could be paid without her authority, nor any receipts granted to any of John’s tenants. In short, neither John himself, nor Sir Thomas, durst go to a fair or a market, till they knew whether she would stand to their bargains. This had often been very troublesome to Sir Thomas, and till he found out the way of managing her by means of Hubble-bubble, and the like persons, he was obliged to proceed with great caution, and for the most part to stay at home, when he would fain have been a gadding.