I'll tell you what I'll do, Dr.
Munro, sir. I'll stand on one tack if you'll stand on
the other, and I'll let you know if I come across
anything that will do."
There seemed to be no alternative between taking him
with me, or letting him go alone; so I could only thank
him and let him have carte blanche. Every night he would
turn up, half-drunk as a rule, having, I believe, walked
his ten or fifteen miles as conscientiously as I had
done. He came with the most grotesque suggestions.
Once he had actually entered into negotiations with
the owner of a huge shop, a place that had been a
raper's, with a counter about sixty feet long. His
reason was that he knew an innkeeper who had done very
well a little further down on the other side. Poor old
"armed transport" worked so hard that I could not help
being touched and grateful; yet I longed from my heart
that he would stop for he was a most unsavoury agent, and
I never knew what extraordinary step he might take in my
name. He introduced me to two other men, one of them a
singular-looking creature named Turpey, who was
struggling along upon a wound-pension, having, when only
a senior midshipman, lost the sight of one eye and the
use of one arm through the injuries he received at some
unpronounceable Pah in the Maori war. The other was a
sad-faced poetical-looking man, of good birth as I
understood, who had been disowned by his family on the
occasion of his eloping with the cook.
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