There weren’t any letters for Mr. Saxon next morning, so they both went out for a walk, asking me the nicest walk to go.
They were quite jolly, Mr. Saxon being full of jokes, and insisting upon going behind the bar before they started and pretending to serve the customers, and asking questions about everything he saw; and when I told him anything, the Swedish gentleman had to put it down in the little black book he carried in his pocket, and I noticed he was always making notes in it—whenever Mr. Saxon thought of anything the other having to put it down for him. If a customer came in with a curious manner, Mr. Saxon would say, “Put that down;” and out came the book. If Harry told about something that had happened to him on a voyage, it was, “Put that down;” and I noticed the Swedish gentleman always pulled out about a dozen papers before he found the book. It seems Mr. Saxon picked up handbills, and cut things out of the paper, and wrote things on bits of paper, and everything had to go into the Swedish gentleman’s pocket, till he looked quite bulged out.
Mr. Saxon, when he came in, wrote till dinner-time, and the Swedish gentleman had to copy all he wrote, and when he couldn’t read the words Mr. Saxon went on at him and said his common sense ought to tell him what they were, but there wasn’t anything to attract attention till they had their dinner. They had a very good dinner, and the air had evidently given them an appetite; but Mr. Saxon kept chaffing all the time, and saying the Swedish gentleman would have to be lifted out of his chair by a steam-crane if he ate any more, and begging him not to make us bankrupt, because we were young beginners.
And he told me while they were travelling abroad they had gone to an hotel where the meals were fixed price, and after staying two days the landlord came and offered them a pound to go somewhere else because the Swedish gentleman was ruining him. But I noticed that Mr. Saxon ate quite as much as the other; perhaps not so much meat, but he ate nearly all the apple-pie and three-quarters of a cold jam tart, and the Swedish gentleman didn’t touch the pastry at all.
And after Mr. Saxon had eaten all the pastry, if he didn’t tell me never to put such things on the table again for him, as they were poison; so the next day I only made a milky pudding, and then, if he didn’t say, “What, no pastry! Oh dear me! Here, Mrs. Beckett, go and make us half-a-dozen pancakes.”
What are you to do with a man like that?
The second day, in the morning, I saw that Mr. Saxon had got out of bed the wrong side.
He was groaning when I went to lay the breakfast, and he said his liver was bad, and his life was a burden to him; and certainly he did look green and yellow. And he was looking at himself in the glass, and going on because his hair wouldn’t lie down; and he kept banging it and saying he looked like a death’s-head, and he should be glad when he was in his grave.
I had put his letters—a dozen, I should say—on the table; but just as he was going to open them the Swedish gentleman came in and snatched them away.
“No, sir,” he said; “you have your breakfast first. I see how you are this morning; and there’s sure to be something in the letters to annoy you, so have your breakfast first. I know you won’t eat any if you open them.”