This was to Gentles, whose smooth fat face was full of wrinkles, and his eyes half-closed.
He took off his cap—a soft fur cap, and wrung it gently as if it were full of water. Then he began shaking it out, and brushing it with his cuff, and looked from one to the other, giving me a salute by jerking up one elbow.
“Well, why don’t you speak, man; what is it?” cried Uncle Bob. “Is anything wrong?”
“No, mester, there aren’t nought wrong, as you may say, though happen you may think it is. Wheel-bands hev been touched again.”
Chapter Fourteen.
Uncle Bob’s Patient.
Uncle Bob gave me a sharp look that seemed to go through me, and then strode into the workshop, while I followed him trembling with anger and misery, to think that I should have gone to sleep at such a time and let the miscreants annoy us again like this.
“Not cut this time,” said Uncle Bob to me, as we went from lathe to lathe, and from to stone. Upstairs and downstairs it was all the same; every band of leather, gutta-percha, catgut, had been taken away, and, of course, the whole of this portion of the works would be brought to a stand.