“Not want it!” said Mrs. Jenkins resolutely. And in two seconds she had taken hold of him, and it was down his throat. “I can’t stop parleying here all day, with my shop full of customers.” Bywater laughed, and she retreated.
“If I could eat gold, sir, she’d get it for me,” said Jenkins; “but my appetite fails. She’s a good wife, Master Bywater.”
“Stunning,” acquiesced Bywater. “I wouldn’t mind a wife myself, if she’d feed me up with eggs and wine.”
“But for her care, sir, I should not have lasted so long. She has had great experience with the sick.”
Bywater did not answer. Rising to go, his eyes had fixed themselves upon some object on the mantelpiece as pertinaciously as they had previously been fixed upon Jenkins’s face. “I say, Jenkins, where did you get this?” he exclaimed.
“That, sir? Oh, I remember. My old father brought it in yesterday. He had cut his hand with it. Where now did he say he found it? In the college burial-ground, I think, Master Bywater.”
It was part of a small broken phial, of a peculiar shape, which had once apparently contained ink; an elegant shape, it may be said, not unlike a vase. Bywater began turning it about in his fingers; he was literally feasting his eyes upon it.
“Do you want to keep it, Jenkins?”
“Not at all, sir. I wonder my wife did not throw it away before this.”
“I’ll take it, then,” said Bywater, slipping it into his pocket. “And now I’m off. Hope you’ll get better, Jenkins.”