“You would not care——?”
“O, no, I thank you! I’m not gull enough to invite my own plucking.”
It was a verbal stumble rather than a designed impertinence on my part, and I winced over my own rudeness the moment it was uttered, the more so for the composure with which it was received.
“No, that would be foolish, indeed,” said M. le Baron.
I floundered in a silly attempt to right myself.
“I mean—I only meant I’m just a rotten muff at the game, while you——” I stuck, at a loss.
“While I,” he said with a smile, “have just, like David, brought down the giant Stothard with a lucky shot.”
He touched my arm in token of the larger tolerance; and, in some confusion, I made a movement as of invitation, towards the table in the window.
“I am obliged,” he said, “but I have this moment recalled an appointment.” “So,” I thought, “in inventing a pretext for declining, he administers a gentle rebuke to my cubbishness.” “You found your friend, I hope,” he asked, “when you left the Montesquieu on that occasion?”
“Kennett? Yes,” I answered; and added, moved to some expiatory frankness, “It is odd, by the bye, M. le Baron, that our second meeting should associate itself with the same friend. I am going down to-morrow, as it happens, on a visit to his people.”