“That’s agreed,” I said.
“Done for you,” he cried, shaking hands. “And now my pipe’s out, and we’ll go and have dinner. Wait till I roll down my sleeves and get on my stock. Why, you and I will be as jolly as can be here. It’s rather a long way to go to your work, but you must get up a bit earlier. Two miles night and morning won’t kill you; and I’ve been thinking what we’ll do. You’ve got your sovereign. We’ll go to a place I know, and buy one o’ them little iron fold-up bedsteads and a mattress and pillow and blanket, and stand it there. It’s breaking into your sov, but then you’ll have the bit o’ furniture, which will be your property, so the money won’t be wasted. What do you say?”
I was delighted, and said so.
“Well, then, lookye here,” he continued, as he took great pains with his hair and whiskers before the glass, and then put on and buttoned up his uniform coat, to stand before me a frank, manly fellow of about thirty, “you’re my company this week, and after that you shall put so much of your salary into the stock to pay for living, and we shall both be free and independent, and what’s left you can shove in the bank.”
“In the bank?”
“Yes, savings-bank. I don’t mind telling you as an old friend I’ve got forty-four pun ten there.”
“Mary has thirty-seven pounds in a savings-bank,” I said.
“Now there’s for you!” he said.
“Yes, she told me so; but perhaps I oughtn’t to have told you.”
“Well,” he said seriously, “I s’pose you oughtn’t, because it was told you in confidence, but I’m glad you did. She never told me.”