Sam’s temper had been irritated from the loss of his property, which he very naturally concluded had been stolen by some of his tormentors. He now looked as if he were going to give way to his temper. Instead of so doing, however, he turned calmly round with his double fist, and said slowly, “I’ll tell you what, young chaps, a man who respects himself keeps his own place, and when he meets a gentleman he’d think himself without manners nor character if he didn’t touch his hat to him. Did any on ye ever see two gentlemen take off their hats to each other? Well, then, I have; and I should just like to know which was the worst man of the two? I’ll say another thing—I have mostly found that when I have took my hat off to a gentleman he took his off to me; and I wonder if his friends laughed at him. But I suppose some of you are great nobs yourselves, and know all about what nobs do.”
Having thus delivered himself, Sam, giving a contemptuous glance at his opponents, slowly mounted the box by the side of the coachman. The gentleman, who had walked on with his daughter, bowed to the Gilpins as they passed.
“I am afraid that, from taking us to be ploughboys, he now believes we are young noblemen in disguise,” observed Arthur. “This is a very different style to that in which we could have expected to have entered Sydney half an hour ago.”
“Perhaps he thinks more of the service we have rendered him than we should,” answered his brother; “however, it’s a curious adventure, certainly.”
“Well, muster, there be rum jokes in this town o’ yours,” observed Sam to the coachman, after keeping silence for some time.
“There be, young man,” was the laconic answer; “and rum things done.”
In this Sam agreed, informing Mr Sykes—for this, he ascertained, was the coachman’s name—how he had lost his property.
“Be thou the young man who stopped the ’osses?” inquired Sykes.
“The young squires did it, and I helped ’em,” said Sam.
“And saved my bacon,” observed Sykes.