"Afraid of a parson," growled Moody, with a look of ineffable scorn.
"I tell ye what I'd be afraid of--I'd be afraid of not getting nothing
from 'em but just what I could take by might and right;--that's the
most I'd be afraid on of any parson of 'em all."

"But," said Skulpit, apologetically, "Mr Harding's not so bad;--he did
give us twopence a day, didn't he now?"

"Twopence a day!" exclaimed Spriggs with scorn, opening awfully the
red cavern of his lost eye.

"Twopence a day!" muttered Moody with a curse; "sink his twopence!"

"Twopence a day!" exclaimed Handy; "and I'm to go, hat in hand, and
thank a chap for twopence a day, when he owes me a hundred pounds a
year; no, thank ye; that may do for you, but it won't for me. Come,
I say, Skulpit, are you a going to put your mark to this here paper,
or are you not?"

Skulpit looked round in wretched indecision to his two friends. "What
d'ye think, Bill Gazy?" said he.

But Bill Gazy couldn't think. He made a noise like the bleating of an
old sheep, which was intended to express the agony of his doubt, and
again muttered that "he didn't know."

"Take hold, you old cripple," said Handy, thrusting the pen into poor
Billy's hand: "there, so--ugh! you old fool, you've been and smeared
it all,--there,--that'll do for you;--that's as good as the best
name as ever was written": and a big blotch of ink was presumed to