“I say, you take your impudent messages yourself. You know you daren’t shoot at him.”
“Oh, daren’t I? I’ll let him see.”
“It’s against the law, and your master’s a magistrate. You know you daren’t. What would he say?”
The keeper raised his gun with both hands, breathed on the mottled walnut-wood stock, and began to polish it with the sleeve of his velveteen jacket. Then he looked furtively at Jem Roff, then at me, and lastly at Mercer, before letting the gun fall in the hollow of his arm, and taking off his cap to give his head a scratch, while a grim smile began to play about his lips.
“You’ve got me there, youngster,” he said slowly, and Jem began to chuckle.
“Of course I have,” said Mercer confidently. “Besides, what’s that got to do with me?”
“Why, he’s a friend of yours.”
“That I’m sure he’s not. He’s a nasty, mean beggar, who makes me pay ever so much for everything he does for me. You ask him,” continued Mercer, giving his head a side wag at me, “if only this morning he didn’t make me give him twopence for a pen’orth of worms.”
“Yes, that he did,” I said, coming to my companion’s help.
“Humph!” grunted the keeper. “Well, youngsters, never you mind that, you pay him, and keep him at a distance. He’s no good to nobody, and I wonder at Doctor Browne, as teaches young gents to be gents, should keep such a bad un about his place. He’s a rank poacher, that’s what he is, and there ain’t nothing worse than a poacher, is there, Jem Roff?”