The other cursed him fairly. “A pox on your insensibility! Here have I been pouring my precious wine of eloquence into thy cracked measure of a head that hath retained not one drop. I’ll up and begone.”

“No, don’t. Have you been talking in truth?”

“O, listen to him! Have I been talking! No, sir; I’ve been thinking aloud; and if my thoughts ran on jackasses in their relation to the creature called a mute, you have only to speak without braying to prove yourself not half the donkey you seem.”

“Don’t be offensive, George. Why do you apply such a word to me?”

“Are you not a donkey, to go brooding on thistles when I offer you grapes?”

“I cannot help but brood. Have patience with me, coz. There’s a thought in my mind I cannot rid it of.”

“A thought? What thought?”

“This cursed Kit.”

“Kit?”

“The Kit her friend is for ever alluding to.”