“No wages wotsomever.”
Hetty looked into her brother’s face with an expression of concerned surprise. She knew some tradespeople who made her work hard for so very little, that it was not difficult to believe in a gentleman asking her brother to work for nothin’! Still she had thought better of Sir Richard, and expected to hear something more creditable to him.
“Ah, you may look, but I do assure you he is to give me no wages, an’ I’m to do no work.”
Here Bobby executed a few steps of his favourite dance, but evidently from mere habit, and unconsciously, for he left off in the middle, and seemed to forget the salient point of emphasis with his foot.
“What do you mean, Bobby?—be earnest, like a dear boy, for once.”
“Earnest!” exclaimed the urchin with vehemence. “I never was more in earnest in my life. You should ’ave seen Swallow’d-the-poker w’en I refused to ’ave it.”
“Refused it?”
“Ay—refused it. Come Hetty, I’ll explain.”
The boy dropped his facetious tone and manner while he rapidly ran over the chief points of his interview with Sir Richard.
“But why did you refuse so good an offer?” asked Hetty, still unable to repress her surprise.