"But what others?"

"All those damned stick-in-the-mud-and-die-slowly tradespeople: Ruck,
the butcher, Marbel, the grocer. Snape! Gord! George, HOW they'll grin!"

I thought him over in the next few weeks, and I remember now in great
detail the last talk we had together before he handed over the shop
and me to his successor. For he had the good luck to sell his business,
"lock, stock, and barrel"--in which expression I found myself and my
indentures included. The horrors of a sale by auction of the furniture
even were avoided.

I remember that either coming or going on that occasion, Ruck, the
butcher, stood in his doorway and regarded us with a grin that showed
his long teeth.

"You half-witted hog!" said my uncle. "You grinning hyaena"; and then,
"Pleasant day, Mr. Ruck."

"Goin' to make your fortun' in London, then?" said Mr. Ruck, with slow
enjoyment.

That last excursion took us along the causeway to Beeching, and so up
the downs and round almost as far as Steadhurst, home. My moods, as we
went, made a mingled web. By this time I had really grasped the fact
that my uncle had, in plain English, robbed me; the little accumulations
of my mother, six hundred pounds and more, that would have educated me
and started me in business, had been eaten into and was mostly gone
into the unexpected hollow that ought to have been a crest of the Union
Pacific curve, and of the remainder he still gave no account. I was too