"No; and I won't have it."
"What do you mean by that, you idiot of a boy? How dare you tell me to my face that you won't have what I offer you?"
"I don't see," said Bill White, "how that ought to put you in a passion. All you want is to make me row you down the river. Well, you have made me, cos I don't want to be shot down like a mad dog, of course; but I won't be paid for doing what I don't like—not I."
"Well, it don't matter to me. You may please yourself about that; I am just as well pleased at being rowed for nothing as if I paid for it. You can please yourself in that particular; but it would have been better for you to have taken what I chose to give you than to have refused it."
The boy made no answer to this speech, but rowed on in sullen silence. He no longer wept now, and it was evident to Todd that indignation was rapidly taking the place of fear in his heart. Todd even began to debate with himself whether it would not be better to throw him into the river and take the oars himself, and trust to his own skill to conduct the boat with the stream to Gravesend, than was the risk of any sudden act of the boy's that might bring danger upon him.
It would have been but a poor satisfaction to Todd to have shot the boy at the moment possibly of his calling for help, when the sight of such an act would be sufficient to insure his capture, without people troubling themselves about what he had done or not done before.
These were considerations that began to make Todd very unhappy indeed.
"Well, Bill White," he said; "as your father, no doubt, expects you by this time, and I daresay you will be glad enough to go back and forget all about the little disagreement that we have had, I will get you to land me at once at those stairs yonder, and then we will shake hands and part."
"No we won't."
"Ah?"