by William Wymark Jacobs

From 'A Spirit of Avarice':

Mr. John Blows stood listening to the foreman with an air of lofty disdain. He was a free-born Englishman, and yet he had been summarily paid off at eleven o'clock in the morning and told that his valuable services would no longer be required. More than that, the foreman had passed certain strictures upon his features which, however true they might be, were quite irrelevant to the fact that Mr. Blows had been discovered slumbering in a shed when he should have been laying bricks.

'Take your ugly face off these 'ere works,' said the foreman; 'take it 'ome and bury it in the back-yard. Anybody'll be glad to lend you a spade.'

Mr. Blows, in a somewhat fluent reply, reflected severely on the foreman's immediate ancestors, and the strange lack of good-feeling and public spirit they had exhibited by allowing him to grow up.

'Take it 'ome and bury it,' said the foreman again. 'Not under any plants you've got a liking for.'

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This volume ialso includes 'The Money-Box,' 'The Castaway,' 'Blundell's Improvement,' 'Bill's Lapse,' 'Lawyer Quince,' 'Breaking a Spell,' 'Establishing Relations,' 'The Changing Numbers,' 'The Persecution of Bob Pretty,' 'Dixon's Return,' 'The Third String,' 'Odd Charges,' and 'Admiral Peters.