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Page 16
"Well, the mark would be best," said Skulpit. "One name and the rest
marks wouldn't look well, would it?"
"The worst in the world," said Handy; "there--there": and stooping
over the petition, the learned clerk made a huge cross on the place
left for his signature.
"That's the game," said Handy, triumphantly pocketing the petition;
"we're all in a boat now, that is, the nine of us; and as for old
Bunce, and his cronies, they may--" But as he was hobbling off to the
door, with a crutch on one side and a stick on the other, he was met
by Bunce himself.
"Well Handy, and what may old Bunce do?" said the gray-haired, upright
senior.
Handy muttered something, and was departing; but he was stopped in the
doorway by the huge frame of the newcomer.
"You've been doing no good here, Abel Handy," said he, "'tis plain to
see that; and 'tisn't much good, I'm thinking, you ever do."
"I mind my own business, Master Bunce," muttered the other, "and do
you do the same. It ain't nothing to you what I does;--and your
spying and poking here won't do no good nor yet no harm."
"I suppose then, Job," continued Bunce, not noticing his opponent, "if
the truth must out, you've stuck your name to that petition of theirs
at last."
Skulpit looked as though he were about to sink into the ground with
shame.
"What is it to you what he signs?" said Handy. "I suppose if we all
wants to ax for our own, we needn't ax leave of you first, Mr Bunce,
big a man as you are; and as to your sneaking in here, into Job's room
when he's busy, and where you're not wanted--"
"I've knowed Job Skulpit, man and boy, sixty years," said Bunce,
looking at the man of whom he spoke, "and that's ever since the day
he was born. I knowed the mother that bore him, when she and I were
little wee things, picking daisies together in the close yonder; and
I've lived under the same roof with him more nor ten years; and after
that I may come into his room without axing leave, and yet no sneaking
neither."
"So you can, Mr Bunce," said Skulpit; "so you can, any hour, day or
night."
"And I'm free also to tell him my mind," continued Bunce, looking at
the one man and addressing the other; "and I tell him now that he's
done a foolish and a wrong thing. He's turned his back upon one
who is his best friend; and is playing the game of others, who care
nothing for him, whether he be poor or rich, well or ill, alive or
dead. A hundred a year? Are the lot of you soft enough to think that
if a hundred a year be to be given, it's the likes of you that will
get it?"--and he pointed to Billy Gazy, Spriggs, and Crumple. "Did
any of us ever do anything worth half the money? Was it to make
gentlemen of us we were brought in here, when all the world turned
against us, and we couldn't longer earn our daily bread? A'n't you
all as rich in your ways as he in his?"--and the orator pointed to
the side on which the warden lived. "A'n't you getting all you hoped
for, ay, and more than you hoped for? Wouldn't each of you have given
the dearest limb of his body to secure that which now makes you so
unthankful?"
"We wants what John Hiram left us," said Handy. "We wants what's ourn
by law; it don't matter what we expected. What's ourn by law should
be ourn, and by goles we'll have it."
"Law!" said Bunce, with all the scorn he knew how to command--"law!
Did ye ever know a poor man yet was the better for law, or for a
lawyer? Will Mr Finney ever be as good to you, Job, as that man has
been? Will he see to you when you're sick, and comfort you when
you're wretched? Will he--"
"No, nor give you port wine, old boy, on cold winter nights! he won't
do that, will he?" asked Handy; and laughing at the severity of his
own wit, he and his colleagues retired, carrying with them, however,
the now powerful petition.
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