“I can’t help that—we must git your clothes back.”
“But they were only old cloathes.”
“Adone-do, Harry. We can’t afford to lose so much as an old shirt. Oh, you’re vrothering me to madness wud your doings.”
He began to scrawl in his slow, round hand. He was no letter-writer, and found it difficult to put his request into words. He also wanted to plead for Harry, to explain a little of his own hard case, and ask that the matter might be allowed to stop at the scare and scolding Harry had received, for “I am joining up to-morrow, and it is very hard to leave them all like this, from your obedient servant Thomas Beatup.”
Harry watched him, bobbing over the sheet, every now and then passing his tongue over his lips in the agony of composition. Then suddenly he slid towards him across the table and put his arm round his neck.
Tom shook him off.
“Git away.”
“I’m sorry I’m such a hemmed curse to you, Tom.”
“You’re a hemmed curse indeed. I ask you to be a man in my plaace, and you’re no more than a tedious liddle child.”