“How would you like, somebody else being with you in it—if made worth your while?”
Coracle starts at this question, asked in a tone that makes more intelligible the others preceding it, and which have been hitherto puzzling him. He begins to see the drift of the sub Jove confessional to which he is being submitted.
“How’d I like it, your Reverence? Well enough; if, as you say, made worth my while. I don’t mind a bit o’ a wettin’ when there’s anythin’ to be gained by it. Many’s the one I’ve had on a chilly winter’s night, as this same be, all for the sake o’ a salmon, I wor ’bleeged to sell at less’n half-price. If only showed the way to earn a honest penny by it, I wouldn’t wait for the upsettin’ o’ the boat, but jump overboard at oncst.”
“That’s game in you, Monsieur Dick. But to earn the honest penny you speak of, the upsetting of the boat might be a necessary condition.”
“Be it so, your Reverence. I’m willing to fulfil that, if ye only bid me. Maybe,” he continues in tone of confidential suggestion, “there be somebody as you think ought to get a duckin’ beside myself?”
“There is somebody, who ought,” rejoins the priest, coming nearer to his point. “Nay, must,” he continues, “for if he don’t the chances are we shall all go down together, and that soon.”
Coracle sculls on without questioning. He more than half comprehends the figurative speech, and is confident he will ere long receive complete explanation of it.
He is soon led a little way further by the priest observing—
“No doubt, mon ancien braconnier, you’ve been gratified by the change that’s of late taken place in your circumstances. But perhaps it hasn’t quite satisfied you, and you expect to have something more; as I have the wish you should. And you would ere this, but for one who obstinately sets his face against it.”
“May I know who that one is, Father Rogier?”