“No, Mr. Christian,” he answered; and in the excitement he felt the strong Yorkshire accent was heard again in his voice. “You’ve no call to be jealous of me, and you know that right well. If I were a gentleman born, like you——”
“Don’t use that expression,‘gentleman born,’ Elshaw,” interrupted Chris lightly. “It means nothing, for one thing. My great-grandfather was a mill hand, or something of that sort, and so were the great-grandfathers of half the men in the House of Lords. And it sounds odd from a man like you, who will be a big pot one of these days.”
“Well, Mr. Christian, if I’d been brought up in a big house, like you, and had had my face kept clean and my hair curled instead of being allowed to make mud-pies in the gutter——”
“I wanted to make mud-pies in the gutter!” interpolated Christian cheerfully.
“Well, you know what I mean, anyhow. If we’d stood just on the same ground——”
“We never should have stood on the same ground, Elshaw,” said Chris with a shrewd smile.
“——And if I hadn’t been beholden to you for the rise I’ve got, I’d have fought you for the place you’ve got with her very likely. But, as it is, I’m nowhere; I don’t count. And you know that, Mr. Christian.”
“Indeed, I’m very glad to hear it, for if there’s one man in the world I should less like to have for a rival than another, in love or in anything else, it’s you, Bram. I know you’re a lamb outside; but I can’t help suspecting that there’s a creature more like a tiger underneath.”
“I’m inclined to think myself, Mr. Christian, that the creature underneath’s more like an ass,” said Bram good-humoredly.
They were standing at the top of the hill; it was a damp, cold night, and Christian shivered.