“Is your gun loaded, Mas’r Harry?”
“You here, Tom!” I exclaimed.
“Course I am!” said Tom indignantly. “What else did I come out here for if it wasn’t to take care of you? And a nice game you’re carrying on—playing bo-peep with a fellow! Here you are one minute, and I says to myself, ‘He won’t go out this morning.’ Next moment I look round, and you’re gone! But this here sort of thing won’t do, sir! If you’re going on like this I shall give notice to leave, or else I shall never get back alive.”
“Why not?” I said, laughing at his anxious face.
“’Cause of these here rambling ways of yours, sir.”
“And if I take care, pray what danger is there in them, Tom?”
“Care—care!” echoed Tom. “Why, that’s what you don’t take, sir. I’m ‘Care,’ and you leave me at home. You don’t say, ‘Come and look after me, Tom,’ but go on trusting to yourself, while all the time you’re like some one in a dream.”
“But what is there to be afraid of, Tom?”
“Sarpints, sir!”
“Pooh, Tom! We can shoot them, eh?—even if they are a hundred feet long! Well, what else?”