“Yes.”
“Thought you was going to make a noo chap of him?”
“How could I when he wasn’t here?”
“No, course not; but your time’s come now, sir. What you’ve got to do is to sarve him as you do your specklums. You grind him down—there’s plenty on him—and then polish him into a fresh sort of boy.”
The gardener leaned upon his spade and chuckled.
“Ah, you may laugh, David,” said Tom; “but he might have been a decent lad if he had had a chance.”
“Not he, sir. Mr Maxted tried, but it was the wrong stuff. Look here, sir, when you makes a noo specklum, what do you do it of?”
“Glass, of course.”
“Yes, sir, clear glass without any bubbles in it. You don’t take a bit of rough burnt clay; you couldn’t polish that. He’s the wrong stuff, sir. Nobody couldn’t make nothing o’ him but a drill-serjeant, and he won’t try, because Pete’s too ugly and okkard even to be food for powder and shot.”
“I don’t know,” said Tom, as he thought of the scene with the dog.