For some time the great subject they had met to discuss was avoided, and they talked about the country round, with its hills and hop-gardens, till Jerry drifted from a remark on the beauty of a sheep-cropped, velvet-green field, with its lawn-like grass, into a lesson on one of the follies of the day.
“Yes, sir,” he said; “feel how soft it is under your feet! Turf’s a lovely thing when it’s lawns; but when it’s horse-racing, and gets hold on yer tight, it’s a sort o’ Bedlam-Hanwelly business. Don’t you never bet, sir. If I hadn’t never betted, I should ha’ been a rich man now, with two hundred pound in the savings bank, instead of being a private soldier—me, too, as knows more about valetting a gent than half the chaps as goes into service.”
“Ah, well, Jerry, don’t fret about it; things may get better.”
“Ay, sir, they may; but then, you see, they might get wuss.”
“Or half-way between. Let’s sit down under this tree; I want to talk.”
“Not a bad place, sir—fine view o’ the Kentish hills. What money a man might make out of chalk, if he had it in some place ready to sell, and people would buy it! Mind my lighting a pipe, sir?”
“Mind? No; I’ve got pretty well hardened to people smoking about me now. Sorry I can’t offer you a cigar, Jerry.”
“Pipe’s good enough for such as me, sir. There,” continued the man, as he filled his briar-root, “aren’t I keeping my tongue well in hand? Haven’t called you S’Richard once.”
“And you must not, whatever you do.”
“Well, sir,” said Jerry, lighting up, and half-shutting his eyes as he leaned back meditatively, “sometimes I don’t see why not; sometimes it’s all t’other. One day I says to myself, ‘What’s he got to mind? He’s livin’, and it’s all nonsense about his being dead and buried; and, as to that business over the bill and the signature, why, he could fight that down like a gentleman.’”