"Then he is going to die if he sends out his horse at this time o' night. Look here, Tobias: I'll put my portmanteau inside and come on the box to have a talk with you—you're such a jolly old card, you know—and you'll tell me all that's happened since I last enjoyed my uncle's bountiful hospitality."
This the young man did: and then the brown-faced, wiry and surly little person, having started his horse, proceeded to tell his story in a series of grumbling and disconnected sentences. He was not nearly so taciturn as he looked: "The maäster he went sün to bed to-night: 'twere Miss Juliott sent me to the station, without tellin' en. He's gettin' worse and worse, that's sure: if yü be for giving me half a crown, like, or any one that comes to the house, he finds it out and stops it out o' my wages: yes, he does, zor, the old fule!"
"Tobias, be a little more respectful to my uncle, if you please."
"Why, zor, yü knaw en well enough," said the man in the same surly fashion. "And I'll tell yü this, Maäster Harry, if yü be after dinner with en, and he has a bottle o' poort wine that he puts on the mantelpiece, and he says to yü to let that aloän, vor 'tis a medicine-zart o' wine, don't yü heed en, but have that wine. 'Tis the real old poort wine, zor, that yür vather gied en—the dahmned old pagan!"
The young man burst out laughing, instead of reprimanding Tobias, who maintained his sulky impassiveness of face.
"Why, zor, I be gardener now, too: yaäs I be, to save the wages. And he's gone clean mazed about that garden—yaäs, I think. Would yü believe this, Maäster Harry, that he killed every one o' the blessed strawberries last year with a lot o' wrack from the bache, because he said it wüd be as good for them as for the 'sparagus?"
"Well, but the old chap finds amusement in pottering about the garden—" said Master Harry.
"The old fule!" repeated Tobias, in an under tone.
"And the theory is sound about the seaweed and the strawberries; just as his old notion of getting a green rose by pouring sulphate of copper in at the roots."