“Excuse me, my fine fellow, but I never use that sort of thing; my money I carry loose.”
“Loose bait ain’t bad,” said the boy, “look a lie and find the truth; don’t care about a Counterfeit Detector, do ye? or is the wind East, d’ye think?”
“Child,” said the old man in some concern, “you mustn’t sit up any longer, it affects your mind; there, go away, go to bed.”
“If I had some people’s brains to lie on. I would,” said the boy, “but planks is hard, you know.”
“Go, child—go, go!”
“Yes, child,—yes, yes,” said the boy, with which roguish parody, by way of congé, he scraped back his hard foot on the woven flowers of the carpet, much as a mischievous steer in May scrapes back his horny hoof in the pasture; and then with a flourish of his hat—which, like the rest of his tatters, was, thanks to hard times, a belonging beyond his years, though not beyond his experience, being a grown man’s cast-off beaver—turned, and with the air of a young Caffre, quitted the place.
“That’s a strange boy,” said the old man, looking after him. “I wonder who’s his mother; and whether she knows what late hours he keeps?”
“The probability is,” observed the other, “that his mother does not know. But if you remember, sir, you were saying something, when the boy interrupted you with his door.”
“So I was.—Let me see,” unmindful of his purchases for the moment, “what, now, was it? What was that I was saying? Do you remember?”
“Not perfectly, sir; but, if I am not mistaken, it was something like this: you hoped you did not distrust the creature; for that would imply distrust of the Creator.”