"What, old Nicky Vro?" Mr. Benny shook his head, as much as to say that the thing could not be done.
"He has been grossly impudent. Apart from that, his incompetence is a scandal, and I have wondered more than once how my father put up with it. In justice to the public using the ferry, and to Lady Killiow as owner of the ferry rights—But, excuse me, I prefer not to argue the matter. He must go. Will you, please, write the letter, and deliver it when you cross the ferry at dinner-time."
"But, indeed, Mr. Samuel—you must forgive me, sir—old Nicky may be cantankerous at times, but he means no harm to any living soul. The passengers make allowances: he's a part of the ferry, as you might say. As for impudence—if he really has been impudent—will you let me talk to him, sir? I'll engage he asks pardon and promises not to offend again. But think, before in your anger you turn him adrift—where can the old man go, but to the workhouse? What can he have saved, on twelve shillings a week? For every twelve shillings he's earned Lady Killiow three to five pounds, week by week, these forty years; and not one penny of it, I'll undertake to say, has he kept back from her ladyship. What wage is it, after all, for the years of a man's strength that now, with a few more years to live, he should lose it?"
"Have you done?"
Mr. Benny stood up. "I should never have done, sir, until you listened to me."
"You refuse to write the letter?"
"I humbly beg you, sir, not to ask me to write it."
"But I do ask you to write it."
Mr. Benny thrust both hands nervously beneath his coat-tails, walked to the window and stood for a second or two, staring out upon the garden. His cheeks were flushed. He had arrived at one of those moments in life which prove a man; but of heroism he was not conscious at all.
"I am very sorry, Mr. Samuel," said he, turning again to the table. "If your father had told me to write such a letter, I should have used an old servant's liberty and warned him that he was acting unjustly. Though it made him angry, he would have understood. But I see, sir, that I have no right to argue with you; and so let us have no more words. I cannot write what you wish."