"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