"Stay then. The longer the better."
"I'll go after Easter then. I can't go before. I can't possibly. It's—it's out of the question."
His brain was clear enough on that point. He had suffered many things from the brutality of Rickman's; but hitherto its dealings had always been plain and above-board. It had kept him many an evening working overtime, it had even exacted an occasional Saturday afternoon; but it had never before swindled him out of a Bank holiday. The thing was incredible; it could not be. Rickman's had no rights over his Easter; whatever happened, that holy festival was indubitably, incontestably his.
"Don't be afraid. You'll get your holiday, my boy, when you come back. I'll make it worth your while."
"It isn't money—damn my head! It's so confoundedly inconvenient. You see, I'd made no end of engagements."
"It's a foolish thing to make engagements so long beforehand. We never know the day or the hour—"
"I knew both."
"Well, in any case you couldn't be going to any place of amusement on the Sunday."
Isaac and his conscience had agreed together to assume that young Keith walked habitually and of his own fancy in the right way.
"Come," he continued, "you're not going to fling up a chance like this without rhyme or reason."