use wall.

"Your mother'll make a row about that, just as my Sally does when I get
molasses on my clothes."

"You should teach her to lick it off, Jemmy Wimble," said the
rough-looking, red-faced labourer, who had lowered down a sugar-hogshead
so rapidly, that he had been within an inch of making it unnecessary to
write Don Lavington's life, from the fact of there being no life to
write.

"You mind your own business, Mike," said Jem, indignantly.

"That's what I'm a-doing of, and a-waiting for orders, Mr Jem Wimble.
He's hen-pecked, Mas' Don, that what's the matter with him. Been
married only three months, and he's hen-pecked. Haw-haw-haw! Poor old
cock-bird! Hen-pecked! Haw-haw-haw!"

Jem Wimble, general worker in the warehouse and yard of Josiah
Christmas, West India merchant, of River Street, Bristol, gave Mike the
labourer an angry look, as he turned as red as a blushing girl.

"Lookye here," he cried angrily, as Don, who had reseated himself, this
time on a hogshead crammed full of compressed tobacco-leaves from
Baltimore, swung his legs, and looked on in a half-moody, half-amused
way; "the best thing that could happen for Christmas' Ward and for
Bristol City, would be for the press-gang to get hold o' you, and take
you off to sea."

"Haw-haw-haw!" laughed the swarthy, red-faced fellow. "Why don't you
give 'em the word, and have me pressed?"

"No coming back to be begged on then by Miss Kitty and Mas' Don, after
being drunk for a week. You're a bad 'un, that's what you are, Mike
Bannock, and I wish the master wouldn't have you here."

"Not such a hard nut as you are, Jemmy," said the man with a chuckle.
"Sailors won't take me--don't want cripples to go aloft. Lookye here,
Mas' Don, there's a leg."

As he spoke, the great idle-looking fellow limped slowly, with an
exaggerated display of lameness, to and fro past the door of the office.

"Get out, Mike," said Don, as the man stopped. "I believe that's nearly
all sham."

"That's a true word, Mas' Don," cried Jem. "He's only lame when he
thinks about it. And now do please go on totting up, and let's get
these casks shifted 'fore your uncle comes back."

"Well, I'm waiting, Jem," cried the lad, opening a book he had under his
arm, and in which a pencil was shut. "I could put down fifty, while you
are moving one."

"That's all right, sir; that's all right. I only want to keep things
straight, and not have your uncle rowing you when he comes