“The ideal!” he cried. “Turnin’ a ‘otel drawrin’-room into a charwoman’s laundry!”
“Make it a rag shop at once,” said Davy, as he went on quietly with his work.
“A rag shop it is, and I’ll ‘ave no more of it,” said the waiter loftily. “Who ever ‘eard of such a thing?”
“No?” said Davy. “Well, well, now! Who’d have thought it? You never did? A rael Liverpool gentleman, eh? A reg’lar aristocrack out of Sawney Pope-street!”
“No, sir, but it’s easy to see where you came from,” said the waiter, with withering scorn.
“You say true, boy,” said Davy, “but it’s aisier still to see where you are going to. Ever seen the black man on the beach at all? No? Him with the performing birds? You know—jacks and ravens and owls and such like. Well, he’s been wanting something like you this long time. Wouldn’t trust, but he’d give twopence-halfpenny for you—and drinks all round. You’d make his fortune as a cockatoo.”
The waiter in fury called downstairs for assistance, and when two of his fellow servants had arrived in the room they made some poor show of working their will by force. Then Davy paused from his work, scratched the under part of his chin with the nail of his forefinger, and said, “Friends, some of us four is interrupting the play, and they’re wanting us at the pay box to give us back the fare. I’m thinking it’s you’s fellows—what do you say? They’re longing for you downstairs—won’t you go? No? you’ll not though? Then where d’ye keep the slack of your trowsis?”
Saying this Davy rose to his feet, hitched his left hand into the collar of the first waiter, and his right into the depths under his coat tails, and ran him out of the room. Returning for the other two waiters he did much the same by each of them, and then came back with a look of awe, and said—
“My gough! they must have been Manxmen after all—they rowled downstairs as if they’d been all legs together.”
Lovibond looked grave. “That’s going too far, Capt’n,” he said. “For your own sake it’s risking too much.”