“She’s gone with Tom, dear.”
“Tom, dear, indeed! It isn’t ‘Tom, dear,’ and it isn’t going to be ‘Tom, dear,’” exclaimed Dick, re-tying his apron viciously.
“But he came, dear, just as she was starting, and he begged so hard that I was obliged to let him take her.”
“There you go!” cried Dick, hammering again at the piece of unoffending leather. “You’ll ruin me before you’ve done. Here’s Max says only this morning, says he, ‘I won’t have that gal of yours hanging about after my wife’s sons.’ He said ‘gal’ and ‘my wife’s sons.’ And I, feeling a bit up, says back, ‘Lookye here, Max, I can’t help your boys coming to my house. I’m not going to send my daughter away.’ I think that was pretty sharp on him, you know; when, ‘Damn your impudence,’ he says.—Look here, Jack,” continued Dick, pointing at the boy with his hammer, “I promised the workhouse authorities as I’d bring you up moral, so don’t you go telling anybody as your master swears, because that was some one else.”
“All right, master,” said the boy smartly.
“That’s better,” cried Dick; “don’t whine. Well, mother, then he gets in a towering rage, and showed me what was the matter with the boots. They’d got Jessie in ’em; that’s where they wouldn’t fit. ‘How dare you speak to me in that familiar way, sir!’ he says, sticking himself out and looking big, like a poor-law guardian. ‘When I employ you, sir, as an humble tradesman, I desire you pay me proper respect.’ And now, mother, you’ve been and made worse of it. Hang me, if I don’t turn burglar, or something to make money, if things don’t mend! I’m sick of being poor.”
“No, don’t, please, master,” said the boy, with a whine. “Honesty’s the best policy. And he who steals comes to a bad end.”
“Now, just look here, young fellow,” cried Dick, with a serio-comic look on his face, as he raised his hammer once more, “burglary’s bad enough, but killing’s worse. There was a man once who had a boy from a workus, just as I’ve had you, to teach you a trade—”
“Yes, master,” said the boy, with eyes and mouth wide open.
“Well, he killed him with ill-usage, that’s all. I shouldn’t like to kill you, you know, so don’t you get chucking any more of your copy-book texts at me again.”