“Stop my lad!” cried the grocer. “I don’t want to be at the trouble of having come downstairs for nothing. Supposing I was the John Sullivan you knew—what then?”
“Then you would tell me what I should do,” I answered, “for I have neither home, friends, nor money.”
In reply to this, the tall shopkeeper commenced submitting me to a sharp examination—putting his queries in a tone that seemed to infer the right to know all I had to communicate.
After obtaining from me the particulars relative to my arrival in the country, he gave me his advice in exchange. It was, to return instanter to the ship from which I had deserted.
I told him that this advice could not be favourably received, until I had been about three days without food.
My rejoinder appeared to cause a change in his disposition towards me.
“William!” said he, calling out to his shop-assistant, “can’t you find something for this lad to do for a few days?”
William “reckoned” that he could.
Mr Sullivan then returned upstairs; and I, taking it for granted that the thing was settled, hung up my hat.
The grocer had a family, living in rooms adjoining the shop. It consisted of his wife and two children—the eldest a girl about four years of age.