“Where’s the seven and six,” I said, angrily.
He didn’t answer, but put three half-crowns down on the desk, took out the book, made his entries—date of delivery, first payment, when the other’s due, and all the rest of it—and was then going into the house.
“Mind,” I says, sharply, “those payments are to be kept up to the day; and to-morrow you go to Rollys, who live nearly opposite to ’em, and tell ’em to keep an eye on the widow, or we shall lose another machine.”
“You needn’t be afraid, father,” he says coldly; “they’re honest enough, only poor.”
I was just in that humour that I wanted to quarrel with somebody, and that did it.
“When I ask you for your opinion, young man, you give it me; and when I tell you to do a thing, you do it,” I says, in as savage a way as ever I spoke to the lad. “You go over to-morrow and tell Rollys to keep a strict look-out on those people—do you hear?”
“Father,” he says, looking me full in the face, “I couldn’t insult them by doing such a thing,” when without another word he walked quietly out of the shop, leaving me worse than ever.
For that boy had never spoken to me like that before, and I should have gone after him feeling mad like, only some people came in, and I didn’t see him again till evening, and a good thing too, for I’m sure I should have said all sorts of things to the boy, that I should have been sorry for after. And there I was fuming and fretting about, savage with everybody, giving short answers, snapping at the wife, and feeling as a man does feel when he knows that he has been in the wrong and hasn’t the heart to go and own it.
It was about eight o’clock that I was sitting by the parlour fire, with the wife working and very quiet, when Luke came in from the workshop with a book under his arm, for he had been totting up the men’s piecework, and what was due to them; and the sight of him made me feel as if I must quarrel.
He saw it too, but he said nothing, only put the accounts away and began to read.