Jim, temporarily abashed, pushed his hat a little to the back of his head, and stared for a moment or two in silence; then his features relaxed into a slow grin.
“’Pon my word, if it do come to cheek, be dalled if I could say which of us has the most of it! Ye bain’t keeper here no longer, Mr. Guppy, and I don’t know as Squire ’ud be altogether pleased if he was to catch you a-pocketin’ one of his rabbits.”
John laughed derisively.
“Squire ’ud know a bit better nor that,” he remarked, as soon as he had sufficiently composed himself. “Squire ’ud know better than grudge I a rabbit arter all them hundreds as I’ve a-had the years and years as I were here. Be ye a-goin’ on now?”
“’E-es I be,” returned Jim, somewhat sulkily.
“Then look sharp, else you’ll very like miss a good few more things what be under your nose.”
Jim walked away growling to himself that he wasn’t a-goin’ to have two masters if he knew it, and that it was enough to be at one man’s beck and call without being hauled over the coals by folks what had no right to be there at all.
John, leaning on his stick, watched the receding form, still with an air of lofty sovereignty, till it had disappeared, and then took his way homewards, feeling that he had done a good morning’s work.
It was marvellous how one so decrepit as he could manage to be as ubiquitous as he thenceforth became. His bent figure and wrinkled face were perpetually turning up in most unexpected quarters, to the wrath and occasional dismay of Mr. Sanders and his underlings, his small keen eyes frequently detecting some small error or omission which his quavering voice was immediately uplifted to denounce and reprehend. Matters reached a climax when, one sunshiny morning, he discovered the eldest hope of the Sanders family in the act of climbing a tree in search of a bird’s nest, and, not content with boxing the urchin’s ears as soon as he descended to earth again, hauled him off by the collar to the parental abode. The boy’s outcries brought his father to the door, accompanied by Jim, who had chanced to call in for orders.
“See here what I’ve a-caught your bwoy a-doin’ of. His pocket be chock-full o’ eggs—pigeon eggs. He ha’n’t a-got no right to go into the woods arter pigeons’ eggs. I’ve brought en to ’ee, Maister Sanders, so as ye may gie en a dressin’. I be too old to do it myself. Nay, nay, at one time I could ha’ fetched him a crack or two what ’ud ha’ taught en manners. But I bain’t strong enough for that now.”