“Robin,” said I, breaking silence again, and using the name which had by that time grown familiar, “have you made up your mind yet about taking service with Dr McTougall? Now that we have got Mrs Jones engaged and paid to look after granny, she will be able to get on pretty well without you, and you shall have time to run over and see her frequently.”
“H’m! I don’t quite see my way,” returned the boy, with a solemn look. “You see, sir, if it was a page-in-buttons I was to be, to attend on my young lady the guv’ness, I might take it into consideration; but to go into buttons an’ blue merely to open a door an’ do the purlite to wisitors, an’ mix up things with bad smells by way of a change—why, d’ee see, the prospec’ ain’t temptin’. Besides, I hate blue. The buttons is all well enough, but blue reminds me so of the bobbies that I don’t think I could surwive it long—indeed I don’t!”
“Robin,” said I reproachfully, “I’m grieved at your indifference to friendship.”
“’Ow so, sir?”
“Have you not mentioned merely your objections and the disadvantages, without once weighing against them the advantages?”
“Vich is—?”
“Which are,” said I, “being under the same roof with me and with Punch, to say nothing of your young lady!”
“Ah, to be sure! Vell, but I did think of all that, only, don’t you see, I’ll come to be under the same roof with you all in course o’ time w’en you’ve got spliced an’ set up for—”
“Slidder,” said I sternly, and losing patience under the boy’s presumption, “you must never again dare to speak of such a thing. You know very well that it is quite out of the question, and—and—you’ll get into a careless way of referring to such a possibility among servants or—”
“No; honour bright!” exclaimed Slidder, with, for the first time, a somewhat abashed look in his face; “I wouldn’t for the wealth of the Injies say a word to nobody wotsomever. It’s only atween ourselves that I wentur’s to—”