“Well, you often exasperate me, Jolly, but I don’t take up a miner’s hammer and knock you down.”
“No,” said Joe, thinking in a pensive way; “you’re a good patient fellow. But he said it was very hard for a man to be thrown out of work for six months for getting in a bit of temper.”
“Bit of temper, indeed! I should think it was! I tell you it was murderous! Why don’t he go and get taken on at some other mine? There are plenty in Cornwall, and he’s a good workman. Let him go where he isn’t known, and not hang about here.”
“He says he has tried, and he wants to come back.”
“And you and me to put up a petition for him!”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“Then we just won’t—will we, Grip? We don’t want any Tom Dinass here, do we?”
The dog growled furiously.
“Don’t set the dog against him, Ydoll. I did accuse him of having done that, but he looked at me in a horrified way, and said I couldn’t know what I was saying, to charge him with such a thing. He said he’d sooner cut his hand off than injure a dog like that.”
“And we don’t believe him, do we, Grip? Why, you’ve quite changed your colours, Jolly. You used to be all against him, and now you’re all for, and it’s I who go against him.”