Mrs. Pamflett took him into the kitchen and explained. He was to enter Miser Farebrother's service, she said, if the miser approved of him. The miser was in bed upstairs, laid up with lumbago, and Jeremiah was to be very polite and civil, and not to mind if the miser flew out at him.
This caused Jeremiah to exclaim: "Oh, come, mother, I'm not going to be bullied. I wouldn't stand it from a man twice my size!"
Mrs. Pamflett expressed her admiration of his courage, but said he must keep himself in. Miser Farebrother was "touchy," because he was in such pain. If Jeremiah was engaged, he was to sleep in the office in London, and if he was steady and attentive he might become the sole manager of Miser Farebrother's business in the course of a few years, and—who knows?—perhaps a partner. She said a great deal more than this to her young hopeful, and she made him thoroughly understand how the land lay.
"And now come up with me," she said. "I will show you into his room."
"But, I say," expostulated Jeremiah, looking greedily at the saucepans on the fire, from one of which an appetizing flavour was escaping, "ain't you going to give me anything to eat?"
"When you come down, Jeremiah," she replied, "I'll have a nice dinner for you. Can't you smell it?"
The conformation of Jeremiah Pamflett's pug-nose became accentuated by reason of its owner giving half a dozen vigorous sniffs, and having thus tasted the pleasures of hope he followed his mother upstairs to Miser Farebrother's bedroom. The miser was in bed, groaning in his night-cap, and pouring out imprecations upon fate. Mrs. Pamflett assisted him into the easiest posture, and he cocked his eye at Jeremiah, who had suddenly become very humble and subservient. He was the personification of meekness as he stood in the presence of the queer-looking night-capped figure in bed, gazing at him with eyes which seemed to pierce him through and through.
"So this is Jeremiah, is it?" he said.
Mrs. Pamflett smiled a beaming assent.
"Draw that table closer to the bed; now those sheets of paper; now the pen and ink; now the blotting-paper; now a chair for the lad. Go; leave us alone."