“’Spect I’ll ’ave to.”
“You won’t chiack or poke borak at his grey and honoured head when, by reason of his endowment of adipose tissue, his wind gives out?”
“Oh, talk sense. Adipose rabbits’ skins!”
“All these several and collective points being agreed upon, my youthful Adonis, I admit you into partnership.”
“Done,” said the apprentice, with emphasis. “It’s a bargain. Go and sleep, and I’ll fossick round town for tucker—I’m good for a sixty-pound swag, and you for eighty. So-long.”
He turned off the gas, took the key of the side door, which he locked after him, and disappeared, whilst Tresco groped his way to bed.
The surreptitious goldsmith had slept for two hours when the stealthy apprentice let himself quietly into the dark and cheerless house. He bore on his back a heavy bag of flour, and carried on his arm a big basket filled with minor packages gleaned from sleepy shopkeepers, who had been awakened by the lynx-eyed youth knocking at their backdoors.
In the cheerful and enlivening company of an alarum clock, Jake retired to his couch, which consisted of a flax-stuffed mattress resting on a wooden bedstead, and there he quickly buried himself in a weird tangle of dirty blankets, and went to sleep.
At the conclusion of three brief hours, which to the heavy sleeper appeared as so many minutes, the strident alarum woke the apprentice to the stress of life. By the light of a tallow candle he huddled on his clothes, and entered the goldsmith’s chamber.
“Now, then, boss, three o’clock! Up you git!”