“Now then, old flatterer, w’en you’ve quite done, p’raps you’ll tell the doctor that I wants a veek’s leave of absence, an’ then, p’raps you’ll listen to what him an’ me’s got to say on that p’int. Just keep a stuffin’ of yourself with muffins, an’ don’t speak.”
The old lady nodded pleasantly, and began to eat with apparently renewed appetite, while I turned in some surprise.
“A week’s leave of absence?” said I.
“Just so—a veek’s leave of absence—furlow if you prefers to call it so. The truth is, I wants a ’oliday wery bad. Granny says so, an’ I thinks she’s right. D’you think my constitootion’s made o’ brass, or cast-iron, or bell-metal, that I should be able to york on an’ on for ever, black, black, blackin’ boots an’ shoes, without a ’oliday? W’y, lawyers, merchants, bankers—even doctors—needs a ’oliday now an’ then; ’ow much more shoeblacks!”
“Well,” said I, with a laugh, “there is no reason why shoeblacks should not require and desire a holiday as much as other people, only it’s unusual—because they cannot afford it, I suppose.”
“Ah! ‘that’s just w’ere the shoe pinches’—as a old gen’leman shouted to me t’other day, with a whack of his umbreller, w’en I scrubbed ’is corns too hard. ‘Right you are, old stumps,’ says I, ‘but you’ll have to pay tuppence farden hextra for that there whack, or be took up for assault an’ battery.’ D’you know that gen’leman larfed, he did, like a ’iaena, an’ paid the tuppence down like a man. I let ’im off the farden in consideration that he ’adn’t got one, an’ I had no change.—Vell, to return to the p’int—vich was wot the old toper remarked to his wife every night—I’ve bin savin’ up of late.”
“Saving up, have you?”
“Yes, them penny banks ’as done it. W’y, it ain’t a wirtue to be savin’ now-a-days, or good, or that sort o’ thing. What between city missionaries, an’ Sunday-schools, an’ penny banks, an cheap wittles, and grannies like this here old sneezer, it’s hardly possible for a young feller to go wrong, even if he was to try. Yes, I’ve bin an’ saved enough to give me a veek’s ’oliday, so I’m goin’ to ’ave my ’oliday in the north. My ’ealth requires it.”
Saying this, young Slidder began to eat another muffin with a degree of zest that seemed to give the lie direct to his assertion, so that I could not refrain from observing that he did not seem to be particularly ill.
“Ain’t I though?” he remarked, elongating his round rosy face as much as possible. “That’s ’cause you judge too much by appearances. It ain’t my body that’s wrong—it’s my spirit. That’s wot’s the matter with me. If you only saw the inside o’ my mind you’d be astonished.”