Chapter Seventeen.
My First Literary Efforts. I Make Another Friend.
The overseer and I stood in the dim light gazing at one another for a few moments, during which I seemed to read in his sharp, harsh face an air of resentment at my presence.
“Hallo!” he said, in an angry voice, and evidently rejoicing at having encountered some one upon whom he could vent a little of the anger seething within him. “What, are you here again, you young vagabond? Didn’t I tell you yesterday to go about your business? Be off with you, or I’ll send for a policeman. How dare you! What do you mean?”
“But please, sir,” I remonstrated.
“Will you be off?” he roared; and I felt that I was about to be driven from the place, when the proprietor’s door was sharply opened and Mr Lister appeared.
“Confound it all, Grimstone,” he cried, “what’s the matter now? Look here, sir; I will not have this bullying and noise in the place.”
“Your father never spoke to me like that, Mr John, when he was alive.”