"No, indeed."
"You had better; he often has it in his power to give useful information in such matters."
"He served me once very well; I have no claim on him, and am not in the humour to bother him again."
"Oh, if you're bashful, and dread being intrusive, you need only commission me. I shall see him to-night; I can put in a word."
"I beg you will not, Mr. Hunsden; I am in your debt already; you did me an important service when I was at X----; got me out of a den where I was dying: that service I have never repaid, and at present I decline positively adding another item to the account."
"If the wind sits that way, I'm satisfied. I thought my unexampled generosity in turning you out of that accursed counting-house would be duly appreciated some day: 'Cast your bread on the waters, and it shall be found after many days,' say the Scriptures. Yes, that's right, lad--make much of me--I'm a nonpareil: there's nothing like me in the common herd. In the meantime, to put all humbug aside and talk sense for a few moments, you would be greatly the better of a situation, and what is more, you are a fool if you refuse to take one from any hand that offers it."
"Very well, Mr. Hunsden; now you have settled that point, talk of something else. What news from X----?"
"I have not settled that point, or at least there is another to settle before we get to X----. Is this Miss Zenobie" (Zoraide, interposed I)--"well, Zoraide--is she really married to Pelet?"
"I tell you yes--and if you don't believe me, go and ask the cure of St. Jacques."
"And your heart is broken?"
"I am not aware that it is; it feels all right--beats as usual."
"Then your feelings are less superfine than I took them to be; you must be a coarse, callous character, to bear such a thwack without staggering under it."
"Staggering under it? What the deuce is there to stagger under in the circumstance of a Belgian schoolmistress marrying a French schoolmaster?
The progeny will doubtless be a strange hybrid race; but that's their Look out--not mine."
"He indulges in scurrilous jests, and the bride was his affianced one!"
"Who said so?"
"Brown."
"I'll tell you what, Hunsden--Brown is an old gossip."
"He is; but in the meantime, if his gossip be founded on less than fact--if you took no particular interest in Miss Zoraide--why, O youthful pedagogue! did you leave your place in consequence of her becoming Madame Pelet?"