count, sir, with his own hands, he powered me out a glass of
sherry wine. It was the right sort, that was," said Hinge, passing his
hand across his lips with a gleam of remembrance, and instantly resuming
his rigid attitude, as if he had suddenly found himself at fault, as,
of course, in his own mind he did. "They was that kind between 'era and
that nice way with it I didn't know whether I was a-standing on my head
or my heels. And then the count he says something to Miss Rossano in his
own lingo--language, I should ha' said, sir, begging your pardon--and
Miss Rossano she answers him back again, and they get a-talking till
there was tears in both their eyes, sir. And then Miss Rossano she
fetches out her purse, sir, and she takes a ten-pound note, and here it
is." Hinge took it from his waistcoat pocket, and opened it out before
me. "Of course, sir, I didn't want to take it, for whatever little bit
I done I done it for my own amusement, as a man may say. I've had a-many
larks in my time, but I never was paid for none of them like that--two
pound a week pension for a lifetime and a easy job into the bargain. I
didn't want to take this, sir," Hinge continued, folding up the note and
restoring it to his pocket; "but Miss Rossano she comes at me and shut
it into my hand with both her own, whether I would or no, and all of a
sudden, sir--" He stopped with a gulp, and swallowed laboriously twice or
thrice. I was tickled, but I was touched at the same time, and touched
pretty deeply; but I could not afford to show that to Hinge, and I dare
say I looked pretty hard and stern at him.

"What did she do?" I asked, rather gruffly.

"She--she kissed my 'and, sir; that un." He held out his right hand
and looked at it as if it were, in some sort, a wonder. "I never seen
anything done like it," said Hinge. "And I was that took aback, and that
delighted, and that flabbergastered!"

Hinge positively began to blubber, and what with, the mirth of it, and
my own vivid sense of Violet's feeling at the time, and this revelation
of the simple fellow's goodness, I was very near doing the same myself.
I verily believe that I should have joined Hinge, and a very pretty pair
we should have made (for I have found at the theatre and elsewhere that
there is no way of disposing a man to tears like the way of making
him laugh through affection and sympathy beforehand); but luckily for
myself, I made shift to ask him, in a blustering way, what he meant