'When he began to roar and bay and whoop in the passage, I haled him out into the street, and there we leaned against the wall and had it all over again - waving our hands and wagging our heads - till the watch came to know if we were drunk.
'Benedetto says to 'em, solemn as an owl: "You have saved me thirty pounds, Mus' Dawe," and off he pealed. In some sort we were mad-drunk - I because dear life had been given back to me, and he because, as he said afterwards, because the old crust of hatred round his heart was broke up and carried away by laughter. His very face had changed too.
'"Hal," he cries, "I forgive thee. Forgive me too, Hal. Oh, you English, you English! Did it gall thee, Hal, to see the rust on the dirty sword? Tell me again, Hal, how the King grunted with joy. Oh, let us tell the Master."
'So we reeled back to the chapel, arms round each other's necks, and when we could speak - he thought we'd been fighting - we told the Master. Yes, we told Torrigiano, and he laughed till he rolled on the new cold pavement. Then he knocked our heads together.
'"Ah, you English!" he cried. "You are more than pigs. You are English. Now you are well punished for your dirty fishes. Put the draft in the fire, and never do so any more. You are a fool, Hal, and you are a fool, Benedetto, but I need your works to please this beautiful English King."
'"And I meant to kill Hal," says Benedetto. "Master, I meant to kill him because the English King had made him a knight."
'"Ah!" says the Master, shaking his finger. "Benedetto, if you had killed my Hal, I should have killed you - in the cloister. But you are a craftsman too, so I should have killed you like a craftsman, very, very slowly - in an hour, if I could spare the time!" That was Torrigiano - the Master!'
Mr Springett sat quite still for some time after Hal had finished.
Then he turned dark red; then he rocked to and fro; then he coughed and wheezed till the tears ran down his face. Dan knew by this that he was laughing, but it surprised Hal at first.
'Excuse me, sir,' said Mr Springett, 'but I was thinkin' of some stables I built for a gentleman in Eighteen hundred Seventy-four.
They was stables in blue brick - very particular work. Dunno as they weren't the best job which ever I'd done. But the gentleman's lady - she'd come from Lunnon, new married - she was all for buildin' what was called a haw-haw - what you an' me 'ud call a dik - right acrost his park. A middlin' big job which I'd have had the contract of, for she spoke to me in the library about it. But I told her there was a line o' springs just where she wanted to dig her ditch, an' she'd flood the park if she went on.'
'Were there any springs at all?' said Hal.
'Bound to be springs everywhere if you dig deep enough, ain't there? But what I said about the springs put her out o' conceit o' diggin' haw-haws, an' she took an' built a white tile dairy instead.
But when I sent in my last bill for the stables, the gentleman he paid it 'thout even lookin' at it, and I hadn't forgotten nothin', I do assure you. More than that, he slips two five-pound notes into my hand in the library, an'"Ralph, he says - he allers called me by name - "Ralph," he says, "you've saved me a heap of expense an' trouble this autumn." I didn't say nothin', o' course. I knowed he didn't want any haws-haws digged acrost his park no more'n I did, but I never said nothin'. No more he didn't say nothin' about my blue-brick stables, which was really the best an' honestest piece o' work I'd done in quite a while. He give me ten pounds for savin' him a hem of a deal o' trouble at home. I reckon things are pretty much alike, all times, in all places.'
Hal and he laughed together. Dan couldn't quite understand what they thought so funny, and went on with his work for some time without speaking.
When he looked up, Mr Springett, alone, was wiping his eyes with his green-and-yellow pocket-handkerchief.
'Bless me, Mus' Dan, I've been asleep,' he said. 'An' I've dreamed a dream which has made me laugh - laugh as I ain't laughed in a long day. I can't remember what 'twas all about, but they do say that when old men take to laughin' in their sleep, they're middlin' ripe for the next world. Have you been workin' honest, Mus' Dan?'
'Ra-ather,' said Dan, unclamping the schooner from the vice.
'And look how I've cut myself with the small gouge.'
'Ye-es. You want a lump o' cobwebs to that,' said Mr Springett. 'Oh, I see you've put it on already. That's right, Mus' Dan.'
