"Lord, the sauce of your nippers now-a-days! Why can't your old gentleman over there teach you manners as well as figures and all the rest of it?"
Clearly he meant no less a person than Dr. Dunstan.
"My name is Trelawny," began Trelawny.
"A very fine name too," said Cherry Ripe. "Take care you never bring no discredit on it, there's a good boy."
"My father is your landlord," said Trelawny. "And I'll thank you not to call me 'boy'!"
Cherry Ripe was by no means so much struck by this as you might have expected.
"You're the Colonel's young shaver—eh? Well, I hope you'll turn out as sensible a man—though I do wish me and him saw alike on the subject of a new tomato house. However, everybody's a right to his own opinion."
Trelawny was fuming, like a train wanting to start.
"You don't seem to understand," he said, "that this very field we're in at this moment will be mine before long!"
"The Colonel's not ailing, I hope?" said Cherry Ripe very civilly.