Trudge. Why, Inkle——Well! only to see the difference of men! he'd have thought it very hard, now, if I had let him call so often after me. Ah! I wish he was calling after me now, in the old jog-trot way, again. What a fool was I to leave London for foreign parts!——That ever I should leave Threadneedle-street, to thread an American forest, where a man's as soon lost as a needle in a bottle of hay!
Med. Patience, Trudge! Patience! If we once recover the ship——
Trudge. Lord, sir, I shall never recover what I have lost in coming abroad. When my master and I were in London, I had such a mortal snug birth of it! Why, I was factotum.
Med. Factotum to a young merchant is no such sinecure, neither.
Trudge. But then the honour of it. Think of that, sir; to be clerk as well as own man. Only consider. You find very few city clerks made out of a man, now-a-days. To be king of the counting-house, as well as lord of the bed-chamber. Ah! if I had him but now in the little dressing-room behind the office; tying his hair, with a bit of red tape, as usual.
Med. Yes, or writing an invoice in lampblack, and shining his shoes with an ink-bottle, as usual, you blundering blockhead!
Trudge. Oh, if I was but brushing the accounts or casting up the coats! mercy on us! what's that?
Med. That! What?
Trudge. Didn't you hear a noise?
Med. Y—es—but—hush! Oh, heavens be praised! here he is at last.