'Lick him!' repeated she, with disgust; 'how is it possible you can beat such a poor delicate little creature?'
'O, easy enough, Miss,' replied the man, grinning; 'everything's the better for a little beating, as I tells my wife. There's nothing so fine set, Miss, but what will bear it, more or less.'
Sir Sedley asked with what he could strike it, that would not endanger its life.
'That's telling, sir!' cried the man, with a sneer; 'howbeit, we've plenty of ill luck in the trade. No want of that. For one that I rears, I loses six or seven. And sometimes they be so plaguy sulky, they tempt me to give 'em a knock a little matter too hard, and then they'll fall you into a fit, like, and go off in a twinkle.'
'And how can you have the cruelty,' cried Camilla, indignantly, 'to treat in such a manner a poor little inoffensive animal who does not understand what you require?'
'O, yes, a does, miss, they knows what I wants as well as I do myself; only they're so dead tiresome at being shy. Why now this one here, as does all his larning to satisfaction just now, mayhap won't do nothing at all by an hour or two. Why sometimes you may pinch 'em to a mummy before you can make 'em budge.'
'Pinch them!' exclaimed she; 'do you ever pinch them?'
'Do I? Ay, miss. Why how do you think one larns them dumb creturs? It don't come to 'em natural. They are main dull of themselves. This one as you see here would do nothing at all, if he was not afraid of a tweak.'
'Poor unhappy little thing!' cried she! 'I hope, at least, now it has learnt so much, its sufferings are over!'
'Yes, yes, he's pretty well off. I always gives him his fill when he's done his day's work. But a little squeak now and then in the intrum does 'em no harm. They're mortal cunning. One's forced to be pretty tough with 'em.'