“But aunt is to send her man to meet me at the Old Bailey,” said Thickset, “and to show me to her house. Now if a strange man says to me, ‘young man, are you Jacob Giles,’—an’t I to tell him?”
“By no manner of means,” answered Quickset; “say you are quite another man. No one but a flat would tell his name to a stranger about London. You see how I answered them last night about what was in the waggon. Brooms, says I, nothing else. A flat would have told them there was the honey-pots underneath; but I’ve been to London before, and know a thing or two.”
“London must be a desperate place,” said Thickset.
“Mortal!” said Quickset, “fobs and pockets are nothing! Your watch is hardly safe if you carried it in your inside, and as for money——”
“I’m almost sorry I left Berkshire,” said Thickset.
“Poo—poo,” said Quickset, “don’t be afeard. I’ll look after ye; cheat me, and they’ve only one more to cheat. Only mind my advice. Don’t say anything of your own head, and don’t object to anything I say. If I say black’s white, don’t contradict. Mark that. Say everything as I say.”
“I understand what you mean,” said Thickset; and with this lesson in his shock head, he began to busy himself about the waggon, while his comrade went to the stable for the horses. At last Old Ball emerged from the stable-door with the head of Old Dumpling resting on his crupper; when a yell rose from the rear of the waggon, that startled even Number 55, at the Bush Inn, at Staines, and brought the company running from the remotest box in its retired tea-garden.
A TEA GARDEN.
“In the name of everything,” said the landlord, “what’s the matter?”