“Doesn't mean to be, can't help it. Noticed his trick of looking at you with his glass eye, keeping the other turned away from you?”
I replied that I had.
“Always does it. Used to irritate his last employer to madness. Said to him one day: 'Do turn that signal lamp of yours off, Minikin, and look at me with your real eye.' What do you think he answered? That it was the only one he'd got, and that he didn't want to expose it to shocks. Wouldn't have mattered so much if it hadn't been one of the ugliest men in London.”
I murmured my indignation.
“I put up with him. Nobody else would. The poor fellow must live.”
I expressed admiration at Mr. Lott's humanity.
“You don't mind work? You're not one of those good-for-nothings who sleep all day and wake up when it's time to go home?”
I assured him that in whatever else I might fail I could promise him industry.
“With some of them,” complained Mr. Lott, in a tone of bitterness, “it's nothing but play, girls, gadding about the streets. Work, business—oh, no. I may go bankrupt; my wife and children may go into the workhouse. No thought for me, the man that keeps them, feeds them, clothes them. How much salary do you want?”
I hesitated. I gathered this was not a Cheeryble Brother; it would be necessary to be moderate in one's demands. “Five-and-twenty shillings a week,” I suggested.