Page:Dombey and Son.djvu/468

Rh "Going? Where are you going?" asked the Captain, looking round at him over the glasses.

"What? didn’t you know that I was going to leave you, Captain?" asked Rob, with a sneaking smile.

The Captain put down the paper, took off his spectacles, and brought his eyes to bear on the deserter.

"Oh yes, Captain, I am going to give you warning. I thought you’d have known that beforehand, perhaps," said Rob, rubbing his hands, and getting up. "If you could be so good as provide yourself soon, Captain, it would be a great convenience to me. You couldn’t provide yourself by to-morrow morning, I am afraid, Captain; could you, do you think?"

"And you ’re a going to desert your colours, are you, my lad?" said the Captain, after a long examination of his face.

"Oh, it’s very hard upon a cove, Captain," cried the tender Rob, injured and indignant in a moment, "that he can’t give lawful warning, without being frowned at in that way, and called a deserter. You haven’t any right to call a poor cove names, Captain. It an’t because I’m a servant and you ’re a master, that you ’re to go and libel me. What wrong have I done? Come, Captain, let me know what my crime is, will you?"

The stricken Grinder wept, and put his coat-cuff in his eye.

"Come, Captain," cried the injured youth, "give my crime a name! What have I been and done? Have I stolen any of the property? have I set the house a-fire? If I have, why don’t you give me in charge, and try it? But to take away the character of a lad that’s been a good servant to you, because he can’t afford to stand in his own light for your good, what a injury it is, and what a bad return for faithful service! This is the way young coves is spiled and drove wrong. I wonder at you, Captain, I do."

All of which the Grinder howled forth in a lachrymose whine, and backing carefully towards the door.

"And so you ’ve got another berth, have you, my lad?" said the Captain, eyeing him intently.

"Yes, Captain, since you put it in that shape, I have got another berth," cried Rob, backing more and more; "a better berth than I ’ve got here, and one where I don’t so much as want your good word, Captain, which is fort’nate for me, after all the dirt you ’ve throw’d at me, because I’m poor, and can’t afford to stand in my own light for your good. Yes, I have got another berth; and if it wasn’t for leaving you unprovided, Captain, I’d go to it now, sooner than I’d take them names from you, because I’m poor, and can’t afford to stand in my own light for your good. Why do you reproach me for being poor, and not standing in my own light for your good, Captain? How can you so demean yourself?"

"Look ye here, my boy," replied the peaceful Captain. "Don’t you pay out no more of them words."

"Well, then, don’t you pay in no more of your words, Captain," retorted the roused innocent, getting louder in his whine, and backing into the shop. "I’d sooner you took my blood than my character."