“Uncommon like,” repeated Palethorpe. “Then you are strangers here, ma'am?” asked Peter.
“Quite so, sir!” answered the lady. “We have only been up a few days.”
“I ar'n't a stranger, though,” protested Palethorpe; “I've bin afore, and know what's what as well as most folks. He'd be a sharper chap than somebody that I see to drop on us.” Miss Sowersoft here gave Palethorpe a nudge with her foot, and squeezed her brows and mouth up at him into a very severe expression of reprehension. At the same time Colin poked a sharp toothpick between the boards against which his back leaned, and inserted it about the tenth of an inch deep into Pale-thorpe. The varlet jumped, as, thinking he had hitched upon a nail; and, having looked under him without finding anything, sat down again a little farther off. In the mean time Peter looked very graciously at the lady, who seemed by no means displeased with his attentions, and continued a conversation, in which he prognosticated how many marvellous sights she would see in London, and how much she would be delighted before her return: concluding with an obscure hint that it would give him much pleasure, should he at any time chance to meet with her again, to point out the objects best worthy a stranger's attention. Miss Sowersoft smirked benignantly, and glanced at Palethorpe with an expression which seemed to say that “somebody might now see that everybody did not think so little of somebody else, as some people were apt to imagine,” while Palethorpe himself grew paler, and verily began to think that his “meesis” was going to be taken, without farther ceremony, altogether out of his hands. He fidgeted about on his seat, as though bent on polishing his breeches, like a tabletop; while another poke of the toothpick, twice as deep as before, made him fairly cry out, and curse the joiner who had put up, the benches without knocking his nails down.
Encouraged by his success, Peter so far increased his attentions as at length fairly to arouse: the jealousy of Mr. Palethorpe, who resented the insult thus put upon him by declaring that as that lady was keeping company with himself, nobody else should speak to her so long as he was by, or else his name was not Palethorpe. To which valiant speech Miss Sowersoft herself replied by informing, her farming-man that he was one of those kind of people who seemed as if they could neither make up their own minds to come to a decisive point themselves, nor endure to see anybody else do the same. A sentiment which Mr. Veriquear rendered still more strikingly illustrative by declaring that the gentleman who sat opposite him was like one of those ill-tempered curs, that turn up their own noses at a bone, but grumble and snarl at every other dog that attempts to touch it.
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Finding even his own “meesis” against him, Palethorpe's mettle began to rise, and he demanded to know whether Mr. Veriquear meant to call him a cur? To which Veriquear replied, that he would look still more like one if he went upon all-fours. Hereupon Mr. Palethorpe challenged his antagonist to a boxing-match upon the green, swearing that he would lick him as clean as ever any man was licked in this world, or be d——d for his trouble. Peter ridiculed this threat, and begged the courageous gentleman who made it to recollect that he was not now in Yorkshire; informing him still further that if he did not take particular care, he would lay himself under the unpleasant necessity of making another appearance at the police-office, as he had done upon a former occasion. Mr. Palethorpe turned pale on hearing this; while Miss Sowersoft seemed literally astounded, as she demanded in a shrill and faint, but earnest voice, whether he (Mr. Veriquear) knew Mr. Palethorpe and his calamity.
“Everybody in London knows him,” replied Veriquear; “and I can assure you, ma'am, that it is no credit to any respectable female to be seen with a man who has rendered himself so disgracefully notorious.”