Landless smiled. "Sir Charles Carew should be a good judge of insolence."
Sir Charles took a leisurely pinch of snuff, shook the fallen grains from his ruffles, snapped the lid of the box, looked languishingly at the miniature that adorned it, replaced the box in his pocket, and remarked, "Well, I am waiting!"
"And for what?"
"To hear your petition that I forbear to bring this matter to the notice of your master. The lady mercifully gave you her promise. I suppose I must follow so fair an example."
"Sir Charles Carew may wait till doomsday to hear that or any other request made by me to him or to the lady—who does not seem always mercifully inclined—" he broke off with a slight and expressive smile.
Sir Charles took another pinch of snuff. "May the Lard blast me," he drawled, "if they do not teach repartee at Newgate! But I forget that the tongue is the only weapon of women and slaves."
"Some day I hope to teach you otherwise."
The other laughed. "So the slave thinks he can use a sword? Where did he learn? In Newgate, from some broken captain, as payment for imparting the trick of stealing by the Book?"
Landless forced himself to stand quiet, his arms folded, his fingers tightly clenching the sleeves of his coarse shirt. "Shall I tell Sir Charles Carew where I first used my sword with good effect?" he said in an ominously quiet voice. "At Worcester I was but a stripling, but I fought by the side of my father. I remember that, young as I was, I disabled a very pretty perfumed and ringleted Cavalier. I think he was afterwards sold to the Barbadoes. And my father praised my sword play."
"Your father," said the other, bringing his strong white teeth together with a click. "Like father, like son. The latter a detected rogue, gaol-bird, and slave; the former a d—d canting, sniveling Roundhead hypocrite and traitor, with a text ever at hand to excuse parricide and sacrilege."