"Bartholomew Pinchin, of Hampstead, Esquire, eh?" I continued.
"Exactly so."
"Then," I went on, raising my voice, and giving a furious glance at my companion, "I'll see Bartholomew Pinchin boiled, and I'll see Bartholomew Pinchin baked, and his Esquireship to boot, before I'll be his servant. He, a mean, skulking, pinchbeck hound! Tell him I'm meat for his master, and that he has no service, body or lip, of mine."
"Tut, tut, you foolish lad," said Mr. Hodge, not in the least offended. "What a wild young colt it is, and how impatient! For all your strapping figure, now, I doubt whether you are twenty years of age."
I answered, with something like a Blush, that I was not yet seventeen.
"There it is,—there it is," the Chaplain took me, chuckling. "As I thought. A mere boy. A very lad. Not come to years of discretion yet, and never will, if he goes on raging in this manner. Hearken to me, youngster. Don't be such a fool as to throw away a good chance."
"I don't see where it is yet," I observed sulkily yet sheepishly; for there was a Good-natured air about the Chaplain that overcame me.
"But I do," he rejoined. "The good chance you have is of getting a comfortable place, with a smart livery—"
"I won't wear a livery," I cried, in a heat. "I'll be no man's lacquey; I'm a gentleman."
"So was Adam," retorted Mr. Hodge, "and the very first of the breed; but he had to wear a livery of fig-leaves for all that, and so had his wife, Eve. Come, 'tis better to don a land-jerkin, and a hat with a ribbon to 't, and be a Gentleman's Gentleman, with regular Wages and Vails, and plenty of good Victuals every day, than to be starving and in rags about the streets of a Flemish town."