"Is this what you call
cleaned? You are not fit for your own shoe-blacking trade! Get
along with you!" and he threw the boots at Diggory in a passion. "I
must wear them, though, as they are, or wait all day. Bring them to
me again."
Walter had some idle notion in his head that it was Puritanical to
speak courteously to servants, and despising Diggory for his
cowardice and stupidity, he was especially overbearing with him, and
went on rating him all the time he was putting on his boots, to go
out and try to catch some fish for the morrow's dinner, which was
likely to be but scanty. As soon as he was gone, Diggory, who had
listened in sulky silence, began to utter his complaints.
"Chicken-heart, moon-calf, awkward lubber, those be the best words a
poor fellow gets. I can tell Master Walter that these are no times
for gentlefolks to be hectoring, especially when they haven't a penny
to pay wages with."
"You learnt that in the wars, Diggory," said Deborah, turning round,
for, grumble as she might herself, she could not bear to have a word
said by anyone else against her lady's family, and loved to scold her
sweetheart, Diggory. "Never mind Master Walter. If he has not a
penny in his pocket, and the very green coat to his back is cut out
of his grandmother's farthingale, more's the pity.
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