"Oh, of course, they all do that!"
"She has heard of you."
"From my good, kind friend, Mrs. Creery, I'll bet a fiver, and I'll bet another that she has painted me as black as an Andamanese,—and the devil himself would not be blacker."
"Well, come over with me to-morrow, and let Miss D. see that you are not as bad as you are painted."
"What would be the use? If she is all you say, I might fall in love with her also! and that would be a very uncomfortable state of affairs."
Mr. Quentin looked at him for a second with a cool stare, and then burst out laughing.
"Well, upon my word! you are the queerest fellow I ever met, and that's saying a good deal; you can never be in earnest for five minutes. Now look here, I want to talk to you seriously about my money affairs.—You see my governor is an old man, and when he is laid in the family vault, I'll have a decent little competence, but until then I cannot keep myself, much less a wife. I'm certain he won't give me a halfpenny more allowance than I have already. I've an uncontrollable knack of spending coin, and running into debt; but with the family acres, I think I might manage to rub along pretty well."
"So you might," agreed his listener.
"But then the governor may live till he is a hundred."
"So he may," again admitted the other gentleman.