“Well, I am. Can’t help it; he’s so jolly smooth with a fellow, and has such good cigars—I say, guv’nor, rather different to your seventeen-and-six-penny boxes of weeds. I wouldn’t mind, only he’s in the way so. Puts a stop to, you know what. I never get a chance with her alone; here are you two shut up all the morning over the parchments, and she don’t come down; and when she does he carries me off with him. Then at night you’re all there.”
“Never mind! he will soon go now; we have nearly done.”
“I’m jolly glad of it. I’ve been thinking that if it’s going on much longer I’d better do without the four greys.”
“Eh?”
“Oh, you know, guv’nor; toddle off to Gretna Green, or wherever they do the business, and get it over.”
“No, no, no, no. There must be no nonsense, my boy,” said Wilton, uneasily. “Don’t do anything rash.”
“Oh, no, I won’t do anything rash,” said Claud, with an unpleasant grin; “only one must make one’s hay when the sun shines, guv’nor.”
“There’s one thing about his visit,” said Wilton hurriedly; “it has done her a great deal of good; she isn’t like the same girl.”
“No; she has come out jolly. Makes it a little more bearable.”
“Eh, what, sir?—bearable?”