“Humph! That’s the least of my troubles!” boomed Stephen through his poultice.
“Civil! Eh, Nell? I can tell you it’s as bad as any toothache, the labor I’ve had with the business—those lazy dogs, Travers and Milford, throwing all the weight of it on me, under pretext of never having done that sort of thing before.”
“That’s always the fate of the willing horse,” said Stephen, without the faintest idea of being sarcastic. “That’s just what I complain of with those idle fellows X—— and W——; they throw the burden of all the business on me, because, forsooth, I understand things better! I do understand that people can’t get work done unless they bestir themselves and attend to it.”
“I wouldn’t be such an ass as to let myself be put on in that way,” said Marmaduke resentfully. “I would not be fooled into doing the work of three people instead of one.”
“And yet that’s what you are doing at present,” replied Stephen.
“Oh! that’s different; it is only en passant,” explained Marmaduke; “and then, you see, it.…”
“Amuses you,” Nelly had it on the tip of her tongue to say; but she checked herself, and finished the sentence for him with, “It is not the same thing; people cannot make terms for a division of labor, except it be in the case of real business.”
“Of course not,” assented Stephen. Marmaduke looked at his boots, and inwardly voted Nelly “no end of a trump.”
Did she guess this mental vote, and did she take advantage of it to ask him a favor?
“Perhaps Marmy would go and see that poor man for you, Stephen?” she said in the most natural way possible, without looking up from her work.