“Don’t seem to take to me somehow, Mr Gwyn, sir,” said the man. “The chaps used to set him again’ me.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No, I aren’t hurt, but I wonder he didn’t get it. Puts a man’s monkey up and makes him forget whose dorg it is.”
“Look here, Tom Dinass,” said Gwyn, quickly. “Did you ever forget whose dog he was, and ill-use him?”
“Me, Mr Gwyn, sir? Now is it likely?” protested the man.
“Yes; very likely; he flew at you. Did you hurt him that time when he was found down the man-engine?”
“Why, that’s what Mr Joe Jollivet said, sir, ever so long ago, and I telled him I’d sooner have cut off my right-hand. ’Taren’t likely as I’d do such a thing to a good young master’s dog.”
“Now, no cant, sir, because I don’t believe in it. Look here, you’d better go somewhere else and get work.”
“Can’t, sir,” said the man, bluntly; “and as for the dog, if you’ll let me come back and tell him it’s friends he’ll soon get used to me again. I seem to belong to this mine, and I couldn’t be happy nowheres else. Don’t say you won’t speak for a poor fellow, Mr Gwyn, sir. You know I always did my work, and I was always ready to row or pull at the net or do anything you young gen’lemen wanted me to do. It’s hard; sir—it is hard not to have a good word said for a poor man out o’ work. I know I hit at Sam Hardock, but any man would after the way he come at me.”
“We’re not going to argue that,” said Gwyn, firmly; “perhaps there were faults on both sides; but I must say that I think you had better get work somewhere else.”