“I am not wont either to thrust myself upon acquaintance, madam, or to give trouble,” said the guest; “nevertheless, I shall need the assistance of a domestic to assist me to dress—Perhaps you can recommend me to such?”
“Yes, to twenty,” answered Mistress Martha, “who will pick your purse while they tie your points, and cut your throat while they smooth your pillow.”
“I will be his servant, myself,” said the old man, whose intellect, for a moment distanced, had again, in some measure, got up with the conversation. “I will brush his cloak—ugh, ugh—and tie his points—ugh, ugh—and clean his shoes—ugh—and run on his errands with speed and safety—ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh—for a consideration.”
“Good-morrow to you, sir,” said Martha, to Nigel, in a tone of direct and positive dismissal. “It cannot be agreeable to a daughter that a stranger should hear her father speak thus. If you be really a gentleman, you will retire to your own apartment.”
“I will not delay a moment,” said Nigel, respectfully, for he was sensible that circumstances palliated the woman's rudeness. “I would but ask you, if seriously there can be danger in procuring the assistance of a serving-man in this place?”
“Young gentleman,” said Martha, “you must know little of Whitefriars to ask the question. We live alone in this house, and seldom has a stranger entered it; nor should you, to be plain, had my will been consulted. Look at the door—see if that of a castle can be better secured; the windows of the first floor are grated on the outside, and within, look to these shutters.”
She pulled one of them aside, and showed a ponderous apparatus of bolts and chains for securing the window-shutters, while her father, pressing to her side, seized her gown with a trembling hand, and said, in a low whisper, “Show not the trick of locking and undoing them. Show him not the trick on't, Martha—ugh, ugh—on no consideration.” Martha went on, without paying him any attention.
“And yet, young gentleman, we have been more than once like to find all these defences too weak to protect our lives; such an evil effect on the wicked generation around us hath been made by the unhappy report of my poor father's wealth.”
“Say nothing of that, housewife,” said the miser, his irritability increased by the very supposition of his being wealthy—“Say nothing of that, or I will beat thee, housewife—beat thee with my staff, for fetching and carrying lies that will procure our throats to be cut at last—ugh, ugh.—I am but a poor man,” he continued, turning to Nigel—“a very poor man, that am willing to do any honest turn upon earth, for a modest consideration.”
“I therefore warn you of the life you must lead, young gentleman,” said Martha; “the poor woman who does the char-work will assist you so far as in her power, but the wise man is his own best servant and assistant.”