Adventure and adventurers -- Juvenile fiction; Christian life -- Juvenile fiction; England -- Juvenile fiction
He did all that was required of him, and more. Not everyone of course
had a right to give him orders, but Clare was not particular as to who
wanted him, or for what. He was far too glad to have work to look at
the gift askance. He did not make trouble of what ought to be none, by
saying, with the spirit of a slave, “It’s not my place.” He did many
things which he might have disputed, for he never thought of disputing
them. Thus, both for himself and for others, he saved a great deal of
time, and avoided much annoyance and much quarrelling. Thus also he
gained many friends.
Chapter XLVII.
GLUM GUNN.
He had but one enemy, and he did not make him such: he was one by
nature. For he was so different from Clare that he disliked him the
moment he saw him, and it took but a day to ripen his dislike into
hatred. Like Mr. Maidstone, he found the innocent fearlessness of
Clare’s expression repulsive. His fingers twitched, he said, to have a
twist at the sheep-nose of him. Unhappily for Clare, he was of
consequence in the menagerie, having money in the concern. He was
half-brother to the proprietor, but so unlike him that he might not
have had a drop of blood from the same source. An ill-tempered,
imperious man, he would hurt himself to have his way, for he was the
merest slave to what he fancied. When a man _will_ have a thing, right
or wrong, that man is a slave to that thing--the meanest of slaves, a
willing one. He was the terror of the men beneath him, heeding no man
but his brother--and him only because he knew “he would stand no
nonsense.” To his sister-in-law he was civil: she was his brother’s
wife, and his brother was proud of her! Also he knew that she was
perfect in her part of the business. So it was reason to stand as well
as he might with her!
Clare had no suspicion that he more than disliked him. It took him
days indeed to discover even that he did not love him--notwithstanding
the bilious eye which, when its owner was idle, kept constantly
following him. And idle he often was, not from laziness, but from the
love of ordering about, and looking superior.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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