“I believe we stand it just because we can't help it.”
“Can't help it!”
“What could we do? What would you do?” asked Blount
“I 'd go straight at the first man that insulted me, and say, Retract that, or I 'll pitch you over the banisters.”
“That's all very fine with you fellows who have great connections and powerful relatives ready to stand by you and pull you out of any scrape, and then, if the worst comes, have means enough to live without work. That will do very well for you and Skeffy. Skeffy will have six thousand a year one of these days. No one can keep him out of Digby Darner's estate; and you, for aught I know, may have more.”
“I have n't sixpence, nor the expectation of sixpence in the world. If I am plucked at this examination I may go and enlist, or turn navvy, or go and sweep away the dead leaves like that fellow yonder.”
“Then take my advice, and don't go up.”
“Go up where?”
“Don't go up to be examined; just wait here in town; don't show too often at the office, but come up of a morning about twelve,—I 'm generally down here by that time. There will be a great press for messengers soon, for they have made a regulation about one going only so far, and another taking up his bag and handing it on to a third; and the consequence is, there are three now stuck fast at Marseilles, and two at Belgrade, and all the Constantinople despatches have gone round by the Cape. Of course, as I say, they 'll have to alter this, and then we shall suddenly want every fellow we can lay hands on; so all you have to do is just to be ready, and I 'll take care to start you at the first chance.”
“You 're a good fellow,” cried Tony, grasping his hand; “if you only knew what a bad swimmer it was you picked out of the water.”