“Why, you said you wanted to see him.”
“So I did, sir; but I don’t think I will. Everybody’s so agen me now. Pay me the two shillin’ you owe me.”
“I won’t. I don’t owe you a penny.”
“Then pay a shilling of it now, sir. I wouldn’t ask you, sir, but I am so hungry, sir.”
“Let’s give him a shilling, Tom,” I said; “I’ll be half.”
“Oh, very well,” cried Mercer; and as I was banker that time, I placed a shilling in the man’s very dirty hand.
“Thank-ye, sir,” he said. “Then that makes three left, but I won’t ask you for them to-day.”
“That’s the worst of getting in debt,” said Mercer, “and not keeping account of it. I know I’ve bought things of him, and he has made me pay for ’em over and over again. I wonder what he was doing about here so soon.”
We watched Magglin go off in a furtive way, with his head down and his back bent, so that people should not see him above the hedge, and then turned along down the path, with the gilt hands and figures of the clock looking quite orange in the morning sun. In a few minutes after, we could smell tobacco smoke, and found Lomax bending his stiff back over one of the beds in his garden, which he was busily digging.
“Ah! Mornin’, young gentlemen,” he shouted. “Come for a quiet lesson?”