“Who? Why, don’t you know?”
“How should I? Don’t remember to have seen him before.”
“Why, you old mufti, it’s the boy, Alf Purvis—now a boy no longer, but a heartless young scapegrace, an ungrateful hound!”
“Ungrateful, eh?”
“Ah, that’s it. As base as he is ungrateful.”
“The boy who used to be with farmer Jamblin?”
“Certainly—didn’t you know him again?”
“Dear me, no. Why he’s quite a swell, gives himself all the airs and graces of the nobility. My word, but he’s strangely altered.”
“Ah, Charlie, you may well say that. He is altered. He owes everything to me, and a pretty return he makes for it.”
“Would round upon you when he has the opportunity I suppose—eh?”