"Foak bea n't a-gwean ter walk on hutheh foak," he remarked calmly.
"A gentleman against the world for bull-headedness," I sneered, aiming, in desperation, at the heel by which mother Nature had held him during his baptism in the thick, slab bath of undiluted oxy-obstinacy (scientific symbol, Jn Bl).
"Hordehs is hordehs," he argued, as the good arrow-point penetrated his epidermis, fair in the vulnerable spot.
I laughed contemptuously. "Fat lot you care for orders! A man in your position talking about orders! Get out!"
"Wot's a (person) to diew?" The point was forcing its way through the sensitive second-skin, or cutis.
"Do!" I repeated, with increasing scorn. "Strikes me, you can do pretty well as you like on this station."
"Bea n't Oi a-diewin' my diewty?" he asked in wavering expostulation—the point now settling in the vascular tissues.
"It's in the blood, right enough," I retorted, with insolent frankness, and still regarding him out of the comer of my eye. "I believe you're Viscount Canterbury's brother, on the wrong side of the blanket."
"Keep 'e tempeh; keep 'e tempeh," said he deprecatingly, as the poison filtered through his system. "Zpeak 'e moind feear atwixt man an' man. Bea n't Oi a-diewin' wot Oi be a-peead f'r diewin'? Coomh!"
"Well, you are a rum character," I remarked, judiciously assisting the action of the virus. "I'm surprised at a gentleman in your position making excuses like that. Do you know"—and my tones became soft and confidential—"something struck me that you were an Englishman." (Even this was n't too strong). "I wish you were, both for my sake and your own. However, that can't be helped. Now, for the future, you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you had your own way, and that you walked a man's bullocks off to the yard while he was helpless. Yes, sir; I 'm glad you're not an Englishman. But the sun's too hot for my bare skin, so I must be getting back; and if I've said anything to offend you, I 'm sorry for it, and I beg your pardon." Then, still regarding him out of the comer of my eye, I turned Cleopatra slowly round.