“Certainly, Sir Moses; certainly,” replied Joe, taking Anthony Thom by the ear as he would a hound, and looking him over amid the whining and whimpering and beggings for mercy of the boy.
“Why this is the young rascal that stole my Sunday shirt off Mrs. Saunders’s hedge!” exclaimed Joe, getting a glimpse of Anthony Thom’s clayey complexioned face.
“No, it’s not,” whined the boy. “No, it’s not. I never did nothin’ o’ the sort.”
“Nothin’ o’ the sort!” retorted Joe, “why there ain’t two hugly boys with hare lips a runnin’ about the country,” pulling down the red-worsted comforter, and exposing the deformity as he spoke.
“It’s you all over,” continued he, seizing a spare stirrup leather, and proceeding to administer the buckle-end most lustily. Anthony Thom shrieked and screamed, and yelled and kicked, and tried to bite; but Joe was an able practitioner, and Thom could never get a turn at him.
Having finished one side, Joe then turned him over, and gave him a duplicate beating on the other side.
“There! that’ll do: kick him down stairs!” at length cried Sir Moses, thinking Joe had given him enough; and as the boy went bounding head foremost down, he dropped into his mother’s arms, who, hearing his screams, had come to the rescue.
Joe and his master then opened the budget and found the following goods:—
2 lb. of tea, 1 bar of brown soap in a dirty cotton night-cap, marked C. F.; doubtless, as Sir Moses said, one of Cuddy Flintoff’s.
“Dom all such dripping,” said Sir Moses, as he desired Joe to carry the things to the house. “No wonder that I drank a great deal of tea,” added he, as Joe gathered them together.