“That’s money! And four pound a month,” he consulted the stick he was notching, “is forty-eight pound a year?”
“And four to it,” Tyson answered. “Who’s paying you that?”
“Na, na!”
“And what’s it to do with the dog?”
Hinkson looked knavish but frightened.
“Hist!” he said. “Here’s Bess. I’d use to wallop her, but now——”
“She wallops you,” the visitor muttered. “That’s the ticket, I expect.”
The girl entered by the mean staircase door and nodded to him coolly.
“I supposed it was you,” she said slightingly.
And for the hundredth or two-hundredth time he felt with rage that he was in the presence of a stronger nature than his own. He could treat the old man, whose greed had survived his other passions, and almost his faculties, pretty much as he pleased. But though he had sauntered through the gate a score of times with the intention of treating Bess as he had treated more than one village girl who pleased him, he had never re-crossed the threshold without a sense not only of defeat, but of inferiority. He came to strut, he remained to kneel.