“Got a wife and twelve children, squire, and they nails a man down.”
Just then Mr Dempster came in, ordered Dingle to go into his room, and we could hear him being well bullied about something, while as he came out he laughed at us both, and gave his head a peculiar shake.
“Off!” he whispered. “Flea in each ear.”
I mention this because it set me thinking that if we two lads of sixteen or seventeen did all the work for which two men were formerly kept, we could not be quite so useless and stupid as Mr Dempster said.
I know that my handwriting was not so very good, and I was not quite so quick with my pen as Esau, but his writing was almost like copper-plate, and I used to feel envious; though I had one consolation—I never made Esau’s mistakes in spelling.
But nothing we ever did was right, and as the weeks went on, made bright to me now by my visits up in North London, Esau would throw down his pen three or four times a day, rub his hands all over his curly head, and look over the top of the desk at me.
“Now then,” he used to say; “ready?”
“Ready for what?”
“To go and ’list. We’re big enough now.”
“Nonsense!”