MY FRIEND, THE TRAMP 81
kitchen, sure isn't it betther they was helping your
honour here than colloguing with themselves inside?"
Nevertheless, I thought it expedient to forbid
henceforth any interruption of servants or children
with my friend's " worruk." Perhaps it was the
result of this embargo that the next morning early
the Tramp wanted to see me.
" And it's sorry I am to say it to ye, sur," he
began, "but it's the handlin' of this stun that's
desthroyin' me touch at the brick makin', and it's
better I should lave ye and find worruk at me own
thrade. For its worruk I am nadin' It isn't me¬
self. Captain, to ate the bread of oidleness here.
And so good-bye to ye, and if its fifty cints ye can
be givin' me ontil I find a kill—it's meself that'll
repay ye."
He got the money. But he got also conditionally
a note from me to my next neighbour, a wealthy
retired physician, possessed of a large domain, a
man eminently practical and business-like in his
management of it. He employed many labourers
on the sterile waste he called his "farm," and it
occurred to me that if there really was any work
in my friend, the Tramp, which my own indolence
and pre-occupation had failed to bring out, he was
the man to do it.
I met him a week after. It was .with some embar¬
rassment that I enquired after my friend, the Tramp.
F
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