“Oh, I am not going to tell tales, gentlemen. Some young gents are born with tempers and some ain’t, while there are some again that come here as nice and amiable as can be, after a year or two get old and sour and ready to quarrel with everything. I don’t know; but I think sometimes it’s them Greek classics, as they call them. You see, it’s such unchristian-like looking stuff. I have looked at them sometimes in the Doctor’s study. Such heathen-looking letters; not a bit like a decent alphabet. But there, I must be off, gentlemen. I have all my work waiting, and I am going away—only think of it!—ten pounds richer than when I first began to turn that there handle this morning, if—if I stop here—I mean, if we stop here till you young gents have done schooling.”
Wrench finished filling his cans of water and stooped to pick them up, but set them down again, to look at them both thoughtfully.
“My word, gentlemen, you would both begin to wonder at the times and times I have laid awake of a night trying to hit a bright—I mean, think of some idea by which I could make a lot of money all at once: find some buried in a garden, or bring up a bag of gold in the bottom of one of those two water-buckets, or have somebody leave me a lot, or pick it up in the street and find afterwards it belonged to nobody. I wouldn’t care how I got it.”
“So long as it was honest, Wrenchy?” said Glyn, laughing.
“Oh, of course, sir—of course. You see, a man’s got a character to lose, and when a man loses his character I suppose it’s very hard to find it again; so I have been told. But I never lost mine. But I do want to get hold of a nice handy lump of money somehow, and when I do, and if I do—”
“Well, what would you do then?” cried Singh.
“Well, sir, I shouldn’t stop here till you two gents had done schooling.”
Then, picking up his two water-cans once more, the Doctor’s footman trudged off towards the house.
“That must have been old Slegge who threw his boots at him,” said Singh thoughtfully. “What a disagreeable fellow he is!”
“Yes,” said Glyn. “I wish I had been there to stop it. He’s been knocking some of the little fellows about shamefully because he says that they have hidden his bat.”