“You wouldn’t laugh like that, David, if you’d got it to pay for,” said Tom.
“True for you, Master Tom; but I wasn’t laughing at the ravage, but at the idee of your uncle, who creeps about thinking he’s very bad when he arn’t thinking o’ nothing else, going spinning down the hill, and steering hisself right into the old sand-pit.”
“And I don’t see that you have anything to laugh at in that,” said Tom stiffly.
“More don’t I, Master Tom, but I keep on laughing all the more, and can’t help it. Now if he had been very badly, I don’t think I could ha’ done it.”
“My uncle is very ill, and came down here for the benefit of his health,” said Tom sternly.
“Then your nursing, Master Tom, and my vegetables and fruit’s done him a lot o’ good, for the way he walked home after being spilt did us a lot o’ credit. I couldn’t ha’ walked better.”
Tom thought the same, though he would not say so, but helped the gardener place the wrecked chair in the coach-house, and then found his uncle coming that way.
“Get the wheelbarrow, Tom,” he said, “and we’ll take the new discs of glass into the workshop.”
“And begin again, uncle?” cried Tom excitedly.
“What, are you ready to go through all that labour again?”