“No, I’m not,” said Stan—“not conceited at all; and if you behave properly to me you’ll find that I shall help you in every way I can.”
“Behave properly! Oh, come! this is rich. Here’s a boy who ought to be at school, where he would get the cane if he did not behave himself, vapouring about as if he had come to be master here. There! the sooner we understand each other the better—Mr Stanley—sir.”
There was a mocking sarcasm in the delivery of these last words that made the boy writhe. But he mastered his temper bravely enough, and said coolly:
“I don’t want to be called ‘Mr Stanley’ and ‘sir.’ I was christened Stanley, but my friends looked upon it as being too pretentious. They always call me Stan.”
“Oh, I see! Thank you for the kind explanation,” said the manager sarcastically. “Well, here you are; and now you are here, what do you want? I see you’ve brought a gun. Come snipe and duck shooting?”
“My father has fully explained in his letter, I believe.”
“Explained? Perhaps so; but I have not had time to read it yet, so perhaps you will speak.”
“That is easily done. You wrote to the firm asking for help and companionship.”
“Of course I did; and I took it for granted that Mr Jeffrey Lynn would come and share the burden of my enormously increasing work.”
“It is all explained in the letters, as I told you,” said Stan. “Uncle was coming, but the Chinese made an attack on the place.”