“ This your lock?” said Bradley, whose surprise had a genuine air; “they told me, where I last inquired, it was the third I should come to. This is only the second.”
“It’s my belief, governor,” returned Riderhood, with a wink and shake of his head, “that you’ve dropped one in your counting. It ain’t locks as you’ve been giving your mind to. No, no!”
As he expressively jerked his pointing finger in the direction the boat had taken, a flush of impatience mounted into Bradley’s face, and he looked anxiously up the river.
“It ain’t locks as you’ve been a reckoning up,” said Riderhood, when the schoolmaster’s eyes came back again. “No, no!”
“What other calculations do you suppose I have been occupied with? Mathematics?”
“I never heerd it called that. It’s a long word for it. Hows’ever, p’raps you call it so,” said Riderhood, stubbornly chewing his grass.
“It. What?”
“I’ll say them, instead of it, if you like,” was the coolly growled reply. “It’s safer talk too.”
“What do you mean that I should understand by them?”
“Spites, affronts, offences giv’ and took, deadly aggrawations, suchlike,” answered Riderhood.
Do what Bradley Headstone would, he could not keep that former flush of impatience out of his face, or so master his eyes as to prevent their again looking anxiously up the river.