‘It was quite a mistake,’ urged Mr Pecksniff, very much dismayed; ‘though I admit it was foolish. I might have known it was a tender string.’
‘Don’t talk to me about tender strings,’ said Jonas, wiping his forehead with the cuff of his coat. ‘I’m not going to be crowed over by you, because I don’t like dead company.’
Mr Pecksniff had got out the words ‘Crowed over, Mr Jonas!’ when that young man, with a dark expression in his countenance, cut him short once more:
‘Mind!’ he said. ‘I won’t have it. I advise you not to revive the subject, neither to me nor anybody else. You can take a hint, if you choose as well as another man. There’s enough said about it. Come along!’
Taking up his part of the load again, when he had said these words, he hurried on so fast that Mr Pecksniff, at the other end of the portmanteau, found himself dragged forward, in a very inconvenient and ungraceful manner, to the great detriment of what is called by fancy gentlemen ‘the bark’ upon his shins, which were most unmercifully bumped against the hard leather and the iron buckles. In the course of a few minutes, however, Mr Jonas relaxed his speed, and suffered his companion to come up with him, and to bring the portmanteau into a tolerably straight position.
It was pretty clear that he regretted his late outbreak, and that he mistrusted its effect on Mr Pecksniff; for as often as that gentleman glanced towards Mr Jonas, he found Mr Jonas glancing at him, which was a new source of embarrassment. It was but a short-lived one, though, for Mr Jonas soon began to whistle, whereupon Mr Pecksniff, taking his cue from his friend, began to hum a tune melodiously.
‘Pretty nearly there, ain’t we?’ said Jonas, when this had lasted some time.
‘Close, my dear friend,’ said Mr Pecksniff.
‘What’ll they be doing, do you suppose?’ asked Jonas.
‘Impossible to say,’ cried Mr Pecksniff. ‘Giddy truants! They may be away from home, perhaps. I was going to—he! he! he!—I was going to propose,’ said Mr Pecksniff, ‘that we should enter by the back way, and come upon them like a clap of thunder, Mr Jonas.’