Mrs Tuvvy seemed incapable of further speech, and stood gazing at her husband with her mouth partly open. It was Becky who exclaimed, with a faint colour of excitement in her cheek, “Oh father, what made him?”
“Do tell us, father,” added Dan, touching him gently on the arm.
Tuvvy looked round at the boy’s earnest face, and then down at the table, and began to draw figures on it with the stem of his pipe. Mrs Tuvvy hovered a little nearer, and Becky sat upright on her couch, with eagerness in her eyes as her father began to speak.
“It was along of a little gentleman, Dennis Chester his name is, who used to come and see me work. He asked the gaffer, and gaffer said ‘No.’ So then he says, ‘Will you let him stop,’ says he, ‘if the others are agreeable?’ and to that the gaffer says neither yes nor no. But this morning he sends for me, and ‘Tuvvy,’ he says, ‘I’ve had a Round Robin about you.’ ‘And what sort of a bird is that, master?’ says I. ‘’Tain’t a bird at all,’ he says, ‘it’s this,’ and then he showed it me.”
“What ever was it?” asked Dan, as his father paused.
Tuvvy made a large circle in the air with the stem of his pipe.
“’Twas a round drawed like that on a bit of card, and inside of it was wrote as follers: ‘We which have signed our names, ask Mr Solace to keep Mr Tuvvy in his service.’ All the men’s names was round the outside, and the little gentleman’s name as well.”
“What did Mr Solace say?” asked Dan.
“He said, ‘You ain’t deserved it, Tuvvy.’”
“No more yer ’ave,” said Mrs Tuvvy, regaining her speech.