"Ah! and so you hate them like poison?" "Yes, in a manner of speaking I do. But I've been a-thinking," continued Swan, taking the nails out of his lips and leaning in at the window, "I've been a-thinking as it ain't noways fair, if all men is ekal--which you're allers upholding--that you should say Swan, and I should say Mister Crayshaw." "No, it isn't," exclaimed Crayshaw, laughing; "let's have it the other way. You shall say Crayshaw to me, and I'll say Mr. Swan to you, sir." "Well, now, you allers contrive to get the better of me, you and Mr. Johnnie, you're so sharp! But, anyhow, I could earn my own living before I was your age, and neither of you can. Then, there's hardly a year as I don't gain a prize." "I'm like a good clock," said Crayshaw, "I neither gain nor lose. I can strike, too. But how did you find out, sir, that I never gained any prizes?" "Don't you, sir?" "Never, sir--I never gained one in my life, sir. But I say, I wish you'd take these shavings down again." "No, I won't," answered Swan, "if I'm to be 'sirred' any more, and the young ladies made to laugh at me." "Let Swanny alone, Cray," said Gladys. "Be as conservative as you like, Swan. Why shouldn't you? It's the only right thing." "Nothing can be very far wrong as Old Master thinks," answered Swan. "He never interfered with my ways of doing my work either, no more than Mr. John does, and that's a thing I vally; and he never but once wanted me to do what I grudged doing." "When was that?" asked Mr. Augustus John. "Why, when he made me give up that there burial club," answered Swan. "He said it was noways a moral institootion; and so I shouldn't have even a decent burying to look forward to for me and my wife (my poor daughters being widows, and a great expense to me), if he hadn't said he'd bury us himself if I'd give it up, and bury us respectably too, it stands to reason. Mr. John heard him." "Then, thath the thame thing ath if he'd thaid it himthelf," observed Johnnie, answering the old man's thought about a much older man. "Did I say it wasn't, sir? No, if ever there was a gentleman--it's not a bit of use argufying that all men are ekal. I'm not ekal to either of them two." "In what respect?" asked Crayshaw.