`Yes, Sir, that's wagging, Sir,' returned the quondam Grinder, much affected. `I was chivied through the streets, Sir, when I went there, and pounded when I got there. So I wagged and hid myself, and that began it.'
`And you mean to tell me,' said Mr. Carker, taking him by the throat again, holding him out at arm's-length, and surveying him in silence for some moments, `that you want a place, do you?'
`I should be thankful to be tried, Sir,' returned Toodle Junior, faintly.
Mr. Carker the Manager pushed him backward into a corner--the boy submitting quietly, hardly venturing to breathe, and never once removing his eyes from his face--and rang the bell.
`Tell Mr. Gills to come here.'
Mr. Perch was too deferential to express surprise or recognition of the figure in the corner: and Uncle Sol appeared immediately.
`Mr. Gills!' said Carker, with a smile, `sit down. How do you do? You continue to enjoy your health, I hope?'
`Thank you, Sir,' returned Uncle Sol, taking out his pocket-book, and handing over some notes as he spoke. `Nothing ails me in body but old age. Twenty-five, Sir.'
`You are as punctual and exact, Mr. Gills,' replied the smiling Manager, taking a paper from one of his many drawers, and making an endorsement on it, while Uncle Sol looked over him, `as one of your own chronometers. Quite right.'
`The Son and Heir has not been spoken, I find by the list, Sir,' said Uncle Sol, with a slight addition to the usual tremor in his voice.
`The Son and Heir has not been spoken,' returned Carker. `There seems to have been tempestuous weather, Mr. Gills, and she has probably been driven out of her course.'
`She is safe, I trust in Heaven!' said old Sol.
`She is safe, I trust in Heaven!' assented Mr. Carker in that voiceless manner of his: which made the observant young Toodle tremble again. `Mr. Gills,' he added aloud, throwing himself back in his chair, `you must miss your nephew very much?'
Uncle Sol, standing by him, shook his head and heaved a deep sigh.
`Mr. Gills,' said Carker, with his soft hand playing round his mouth, and looking up into the Instrument- maker's face, `it would be company to you to have a young fellow in your shop just now, and it would be obliging me if you would give one house-room for the present. No, to be sure,' he added quickly, in anticipation of what the old man was going to say, `there's not much business doing there, I know; but you can make him clean the place out, polish up the instruments; drudge, Mr. Gills. That's the lad!'
Sol Gills pulled down his spectacles from his forehead to his eyes, and looked at Toodle Junior standing upright in the corner: his head presenting the appearance (which it always did) of having been newly drawn out of a bucket of cold water; his small waistcoat rising and falling quickly in the play of this emotions; and his eyes intently fixed on Mr. Carker, without the least reference to his proposed master.
`Will you give him house-room, Mr. Gills?' said the Manager.