"Why, don't you like it, you dog?" retorted Mr. Fewster, with a spice of his native humor.
With a pleasant laugh Mr. Fewster led the way into his sitting-room, and set light to the fire and lit a second candle.
"This is better," said the Lascar, huddling before the fire. "Ah, this is good, this warmth; it is life! Have you ever slept out in the cold, master?"
He had recovered his self-possession and much of his usual equanimity.
"I have; in the cold and wet, for two or three nights together."
"There was the Union," suggested Mr. Fewster.
"I have been there often enough. Sometimes I was too late; sometimes there were too many of us; sometimes I didn't care even for that shelter."
"Would you like to sleep in my shop? I think I could trust you there."
"I think you might. I shouldn't be likely to steal a coffin. I shouldn't care to sleep there, master, and that's flat. If I woke up in the dark, I should see dead men lying in the coffins. I wouldn't mind it so much if the coffins were plain deal ones; but black--ugh!"
Mr. Fewster laughed loud and long. Coffins were playthings to him--toys symbolical of the joys of life. He laughed merrily as he set food on the table, the Lascar watching him with greedy eyes the while. "Fall to, you dog!" said Mr. Fewster; and like a dog, devoid though of a dog's generous nature, the Lascar fell to, and devoured the bread and cheese. Meanwhile Mr. Fewster helped himself to a large glass of rum. He was one of the soberest of undertakers, who, as a rule, are not the soberest of men. He drank but very rarely; but when he did, all the worst part of his nature disported itself, in revenge for being generally kept so much under control. Now as he drank his rum--and he drank it neat--he became savage, vengeful, desperate. He had never felt till now how deeply he loved Ellen Taylor. He had loved her in a light way from the first, and his love had grown quietly, and had been fed by her avoidance of his attentions. Her behavior towards him had deepened his love and intensified it. Yet all along, notwithstanding that he felt he was not as agreeable in her eyes as he would wish to be, he thought that to have he had only to ask. "They, poor working people," he thought, "earning just enough to keep them, living as it were from hand to mouth, _must_ feel flattered and honored by my attention--by the attention of a man who has a prosperous business and an account at the bank." As for marriage, he had not thought of that till lately. But Ellen had so firmly and so steadily repulsed him in any advances he had plucked up courage to make, that he had resolved to lower himself and ask her to be his wife. Having determined to make the sacrifice, he considered that the road was clear to him. He reasoned with himself thus: "She thought perhaps that I did not mean honorably by her, and that is the cause of her treating me so coldly; but when she learns my real intentions she cannot but feel flattered, and must accept me."