D. Wragg seemed to think that, in spite of his words, the mistake might be on his side if he made any complaints about the treatment he had received from the police. Once or twice he bristled up, and seemed to be making ready for a grand eruption; but second thoughts always came in time to calm him down, and those second thoughts, as a rule, related to the three dogs in the attic, the sacks of new corks, and the large flat hamper of Westphalia hams, respecting the possession of which goods he would not have liked to be too closely questioned.
That the police still had an eye upon his place he was sure; for he had many little quiet hints to that effect from friends outside, who knew a policeman in plain-clothes quite as well as if he were in uniform, and who, in consequence, were rather given to laughing at the popular notion that plain-clothes officers were able to mix here and there unknown with any society they might choose. But as the police seemed disposed to confine their attentions to a little quiet surveillance, and in other respects left him quite at peace, D. Wragg did not conceive that it would be advisable to beard the lions of the public order in their dens; so he winked to himself, watched anxiously every bystander who struck him as being at all like a policeman in mufti, and contented himself with talking largely to his confidential friends, though how far he was placing confidence in them remains to be proved.
“Look here, you know,” he said to Monsieur Canau one morning, when they had met on that neutral ground the passage, and adjourn ed to the shop, where they stood looking at one another in a curious distrustful fashion,—“look here, you know; we’re old friends, and you’ve lodged with me goodness knows how many years. I don’t mind speaking out before you. But don’t you make no mistake; there ain’t nothing kept back by me. As to them dorgs, how could I help about the dorgs when friends comes to me and says, ‘My dorg ain’t quite the thing to-day; I think I’ll get you to give him a dust o’ your distemper powder.’ And another one says, ‘I wish you’d take my dorg for a bit, and see if you think it’s mange as is a-comin’ on;’ while directly after comes another with a skye wiry, and says as he isn’t satisfied with the sit of his dorg’s ears, nor the way he sets up his tail. Well, in course I has to see to these things for ’em, my place being a sorter orspittle; and that’s how them dorgs come to be up-stairs; and the way they’ve come on since I’ve had ’em is something wonderful.”
Monsieur Canau nodded, and began to roll up a cigarette with clever manipulating fingers, keeping his eyes half closed the while, and smiling in a strange reserved way, that might have meant amusement, contempt, or merely sociability.
D. Wragg saw it, and became directly more impressive in his manner.
“Look here, you know,” he continued, earnestly; “I don’t mind speaking out before you. Don’t you make no mistake; we’re old friends, and this is how it is. Don’t you see, it’s all a plant as that there Jack Screwby got up because I as good as kicked him out—a vagabond! Wanted to come sneaking here after—but there!” he jerked out, throwing himself into quite a convulsion of spasmodic kicks, and scattering imaginary turnip-seed by the handful;—“I won’t talk about that no more. Only look here, you know; you’re my lodger, and I like my lodgers to look up to their landlord with respect; so don’t you make no mistake, and go for to think as them corks ain’t all square, because they air—square as square.”
Canau nodded, and lit his cigarette.
“Look here, you know,” continued D. Wragg; “it’s like this here—A man comes to you and he says, ‘I want two score o’ blue rocks’—pigeons, you know, for trap-shooting, a thing as you furriners can’t understand, though you may come to some day. Well, he says, ‘I want two score o’ blue rocks, and I ain’t got no money, but I’ve got corks;’ and corks, you know, is money, if there ain’t no money, same as, when there warn’t no money, people used to swop. Well, then, we settles it in that way—wally for wally—he has blue rocks, and I has corks; and he’ll sell his blue rocks for money to the swells, and I shall sell my corks for money to a chap I knows as makes ginger-pop. And now, what’s the matter? No one can’t say after that as them corks ain’t square, can they?”
“But there was the ham,” said Canau, apparently disposed to cavil.
“Don’t you make no mistake about that. That there ham’s sweet enough; nothing couldn’t be squarer. We like ham, we do; and Mother Winks is mortal partial to a rasher. That’s why I laid in a stock.”