“Come now, dear Fred,” said Enoch soothingly, while he arranged the pillows, “do give up thinking about these things just for a little while till you are better, and in the meantime I will look after—”
“And he’s such a lazy boy too,” interrupted the invalid,—“never gets up in time unless I rouse him.—Has the shop been opened, Enoch?”
“Yes, didn’t the doctor tell you? I always open it myself;” returned Enoch, speaking rapidly to prevent his brother, if possible, from asking after the boy, about whose unfaithfulness he was still ignorant. “And now, Fred, I insist on your handing the whole business over to me for a week or two, just as it stands; if you don’t I’ll go back to Africa. Why, you’ve no idea what a splendid shopman I shall make. You seem to forget that I have been a successful diamond-merchant.”
“I don’t see the connection, Enoch,” returned the other, with a faint smile.
“That’s because you’ve never been out of London, and can’t believe in anybody who hasn’t been borne or at least bred, within the sound of Bow Bells. Don’t you know that diamond-merchants sometimes keep stores, and that stores mean buying and selling, and corresponding, and all that sort of thing? Come, dear Fred, trust me a little—only a little—for a day or two, or rather, I should say, trust God, and try to sleep. There’s a dear fellow—come.”
The sick man heaved a deep sigh, turned over on his side, and dropped into a quiet slumber—whether under the influence of a more trustful spirit or of exhaustion we cannot say—probably both.
Returning to the shop, Mr Blurt sat down in his old position on the stool and began to meditate. He was interrupted by the entrance of a woman carrying a stuffed pheasant. She pointed out that one of the glass eyes of the creature had got broken, and wished to know what it would cost to have a new one put in. Poor Mr Blurt had not the faintest idea either as to the manufacture or cost of glass eyes. He wished most fervently that the woman had gone to some other shop. Becoming desperate, and being naturally irascible, as well as humorous, he took a grimly facetious course.
“My good woman,” he said, with a bland smile, “I would recommend you to leave the bird as it is. A dead pheasant can see quite as well with one eye as with two, I assure you.”
“La! sir, but it don’t look so well,” said the woman.
“O yes, it does; quite as well, if you turn its blind side to the wall.”