"Lor, sir, will you?"
"Yes, yes. You can go now. Is the tea all right?"
"Oh, dear, yes, sir. You are very good indeed. Misses said as you was a very good lodger, which I knowed to mean as you didn't be petikler about your money, and now I sees you ain't. Thank you, sir, for me. I'll get up in the night if you want anythink."
CHAPTER CLIX.
TODD MAKES A VIGOROUS ATTEMPT TO REACH GRAVESEND.
The servant was so profuse in her acknowledgments for the half-guinea, that she seemed as if she would never get out of the room, and Todd had to say—
"There—there, that will do. Now leave me, my good girl—that will do," before she, with a curtsey at every step, withdrew.
"Well," she said, as she went down stairs. "If I tell misses of this, I'm a Prussian. Oh, dear, I keeps it to myself and says nothing to nobody, excepting to my Thomas as is in the horse-guards. Ah, he is a nice fellow, and out o' this I'll make him a present of a most elegant watch-ribbon, that he can put a bullet at the end of, and let it hang out of his fob all as if he had a real watch in his pocket."
"Humph!" said Todd. "I have bought her good opinion cheap. It was well worth ten-and-sixpence not to have the servant watching me, with, for all I know to the contrary, eyes of suspicion—well worth it."
It was not very often that Todd indulged himself with a cup of tea. Something stronger was commonly more congenial to his appetite; but upon this occasion, after his long sleep, the tea had upon him a most refreshing effect, and he took it with real pleasure. Mrs. Hardman, in consideration of the guinea she had received beforehand, had done him justice, as far as the quality of the tea was concerned, and he had it good.
"Well," he said, after his third cup, "I did not think that there was so much virtue in a cup of tea, after all; but of a surety, I feel wonderfully refreshed at it. How the wind blows."