“Is your head clear now?”
“As a bell.”
“Then go and do my work, and don't do an atom more or an atom less than your task.”
“No, sir. Oh, Mr. Meadows! it is a pleasure to serve you. You are as deep as the sea, sir, and as firm as the rock. You never drink, nor anything else, that I can find. A man out of a thousand! No little weakness, like the rest of us, sir. You are a great man, sir. You are a model of a man of bus—”
“Good-morning,” growled Meadows roughly, and turned his back.
“Good-morning, sir,” said Peter mellifluously. And opening the back door about ten inches, he wriggled out like a weasel going through a chink in a wall.
William Fielding fell like a child into the trap. “Give me time, and it will be all right,” is the debtor's delusion. William thanked Crawley for not pressing him, and so compelling him to force a sale of all his hogs, fat or lean. Crawley received his thanks with a leer, returned in four days, got the judgment signed, and wriggled away with it to Meadows' back door.
“You take out an arrest”—Meadows gave him a pocketbook—“put it in this, and keep it ready in your pocket night and day.”
“I dare say it will come into use before the year is out, sir.”
“I hope not.”