“Humph!” said Dick Moy, “I wouldn’t give my old ’ooman for six dozen of ’er.”
“Just so,” observed Jerry, with a grin, “an’ I’ve no manner of doubt that Dr Hall wouldn’t give her for sixty dozen o’ your old ’ooman. It’s human natur’, lad,—that’s where it is, mates. But what has come o’ Billy Towler? Has he gone back to the what’s-’is-name—the Cavern, eh?”
“The Grotto, you mean,” said Jack Shales.
“Well, the Grotto—’tan’t much differ.”
“He’s gone back for a time,” said Dick; “but Mr Durant has prowided for him too. He has given him a berth aboord one of his East-Indiamen; so if Billy behaves hisself his fortin’s as good as made. Leastwise he has got his futt on the first round, an’ the ladder’s all clear before him.”
“By the way, what’s that I’ve heard,” said Jack Shales, “about Mr Durant findin’ out that he’d know’d Billy Towler some years ago?”
“I don’t rightly know,” replied Dick. “I’ve ’eerd it said that the old gentleman recognised him as a beggar boy ’e’d tuck a fancy to an’ putt to school long ago; but Billy didn’t like the school, it seems, an’ runn’d away—w’ich I don’t regard as wery surprisin’—an’ Mr Durant could never find out where ’e’d run to. That’s how I ’eerd the story, but wot’s true of it I dun know.”
“There goes the dinner-bell!” exclaimed Jack Shales, rising with alacrity on hearing a neighbouring clock strike noon.
Jerry rose with a sigh, and remarked, as he shook the ashes out of his pipe, and put it into his waistcoat pocket, that his appetite had quite left him; that he didn’t believe he was fit for more than two chickens at one meal, whereas he had seen the day when he would have thought nothing of a whole leg of mutton to his own cheek.
“Ah,” remarked Dick Moy, “Irish mutton, I s’pose. Well, I don’t know ’ow you feels, but I feels so hungry that I could snap at a ring-bolt; and I know of a lot o’ child’n, big an’ small, as won’t look sweet on their daddy if he keeps ’em waitin’ for dinner, so come along, mates.”