Therefore Tickuss, for some time, looked less wise than usual, and scratched his head. The brain replied, as it generally does, to this soft local stimulant, so briskly in fact that the master soon was able to clap both his hands into their natural home--the pockets of his breeches--and thus to survey the scene, and grin.
"Did 'ee think to do me, then, old brother Zak? Now did 'ee, did 'ee, did 'ee? Ah, I were aborn afore you, Zak; or if I were not, it were mother's mistake. Go along wi 'ee, Zak, go along wi' 'ee! Go home to thy cat, and thy little kitten, Etty."
He knew, by the track, that his brother had passed a good while ago, or he would not have dared to speak in this rebellious vein. And what he said next was even more disloyal.
"Danged if I ain't a gude mind to hornstring that old hosebird of a Dobbin; ay, and I wull too, if Zak cometh prowling round my place, like this. If a didn't mane no trachery, why dothn't a come in, and call for a horn of ale and a bite of cold bakkon. Ho, ho, we've a pretty well stopped him of that, though. No Master Zak now; go thine own ways. Keep thyzell to thyzell's the law of the land, to my thinking."
Now a year, or even six months ago, Leviticus Cripps would sooner have lost a score of pigs than make such a speech, inhospitable, unnatural, unbrotherly, and violently un-Crippsian. Nothing but his own bad conscience (as he fell more and more away from honour and due esteem for Beckley) could have suggested to him such a low and crooked view of Zacchary. The Carrier was not, in any measure, spying or prowling, or even watching. Such courses were out of his track altogether. Rather would he have come with a fist, if the family honour demanded it; and therewith have converted his brother's olfactory organ into something loftier, as the medium of a sense of honesty.
In bare point of fact the family honour demanded this vindication. But the need had not as yet been conveyed to the knowledge of the executive power. Zacchary had no suspicion at present of his brother's fearful lapse. And the only thing that brought him down that lane, was another stroke of business in the washing line. Squire Corser had married a new sort of wife with a tendency towards the nobility; wherefore a monthly wash was out of keeping with her loftier views, though she had a fine kitchen-garden; and she cried, till the Squire put the whole of it out, and sent it every week to Beckley. Hence a new duty for Dobbin arose, which he faced with his usual patience, simply reserving his right to travel at the pace he considered expedient, and to have a stronger and deeper bottom stitched to his old nose-bag.