"Well——" Angela began rather to envy this young woman, who was a clear gainer of a whole day by her religion; "well, Miss Hermitage, will you come to me on trial? Thank you; we can settle about deductions afterward, if you please. And if you will come to-morrow—that is right. Now, if you please to take a turn with me, we will talk things over together; goodnight, Mr. Bunker."
She took the girl's arm and led her away, being anxious to get Bunker out of sight. The aspect of this agent annoyed and irritated her almost beyond endurance; so she left him with his nephew.
"One of Bunker's!" Harry repeated softly.
"You here!" growled the uncle, "dangling after a girl when you ought to be at work! How long, I should like to know, are we hard-working Stepney folk to be troubled with an idle, good-for-nothing vagabond? Eh, sir? How long? And don't suppose that I mean to do anything for you when your money is all gone. Do you hear, sir? do you hear?"
"I hear, my uncle!" As usual, the young man laughed; he sat upon the arm of a garden-seat, with his hands in his pockets, and laughed an insolent, exasperating laugh. Now, Mr. Bunker in all his life had never seen the least necessity or occasion for laughing at anything at all, far less at himself. Nor, hitherto, had any one dared to laugh at him.
"Sniggerin' peacock!" added Mr. Bunker fiercely, rattling a bunch of keys in his pocket.
Harry laughed again, with more abandon. This uncle of his, who regarded him with so much dislike, seemed a very humorous person.
"Connection by marriage," he said. "There is one question I have very much wished to put to you. When you traded me away, now three-and-twenty years ago, or thereabouts—you remember the circumstances, I dare say, better than I can be expected to do—what did you get for me?"
Then Bunker's color changed, his cheeks became quite white. Harry thought it was the effect of wrath, and went on.
"Half a crown an hour, of course, during the negotiations, which I dare say took a week—that we understand; but what else? Come, my uncle, what else did you get?"