“Yes, sir, I don’t deny nothin’.”
“I’d like to catch you at it! Well, how long did you keep the pledge?”
“I believe it were a matter of three weeks, sir, then I cotched cold.”
“Oh, indeed! And the gin cotched you? Now, clear up that place. I shall cook breakfast myself. When you have put things ship-shape from my point of view, not yours, recollect, I shall give you sixpence, then you can go to the baths round the corner and scrub yourself from head to foot. Your things—except the hat, I burnt that, you appear to have stored dripping in it—are in the box I gave you, put them on and then wait here for me. That gridiron, those tumblers, those cups and other things you have smashed or pawned, you will buy out of your next three weeks’ wages—Farris’s gin-hole has all your savings, no doubt. And to-night I shall give you a dose of castor oil mixed with senna.”
“Oh, Lord help me!” groaned Tolly, and he shuffled nearer to his master, with his slits of lips drawn tight across his fang—he had experienced Strange’s treatment before this.
“Now stop groaning, and do your work, neither I nor the Lord would touch you with a pair of tongs in your present beastly condition! You have earned your punishment and of course you shall get it. If you lived decently you would have a first-rate place and you know it, and, look here, I have come to the end of my patience, if I find you in this state again, I shall sack you.”
Tolly gave an anguished squeal.
“Oh, I’ll try, sir, I does try, I swear to God I does. I tries, I does, till I sweats like a bullock and doesn’t know if I’m on my head or my heels, but summow it ain’t no go. Don’t sack me, for the love of God, don’t, sir.”
“Finish your sweeping, and go over that place under the table again. I shall see how you get on after the bath and the castor oil.
“Poor beggar!” said Strange to himself, as he ate his ham and drank his well-sweetened tea. “Poor beggar! I wonder if I shall ever make anything out of him! Only that the creature is so weakly—look at the miserable hold of his claws on that dustpan!—I should take him about with me, the Arabs would teach him sobriety anyway and he might pose as an apostle of Christianity among them.”