“Who are we?” repeated he. “Did you ask who are we?”
“Yes, sir, that was what I made bold to ask.”
“Cool, certainly; what might be called uncommon cool. To what line of life were you brought up to, my worthy gent? I have rather a curiosity about your antecedents.”
“That same curiosity cost you a trifle once before,” said I, no longer able to control myself, and dying to repay his impertinence. “I remember, once upon a time, meeting you on a railroad, and you were so eager to exhibit the skill with which you could read a man's calling, that you bet me a sovereign you would guess mine. You did so, and lost.”
“You can't be—no, it's impossible. Are you really the goggle-eyed fellow that walked off with the bag for Kalbbratonstadt?”
“I did, by mistake, carry away a bag on that occasion, and so punctiliously did I repay my error that I travelled the whole journey to convey those despatches to their destination.”
“I know all about it,” said he, in a frank, gay manner. “Doubleton told me the whole story. You dined with him and pretended you were I don't remember whom, and then you took old Mamma Keats off to Como and made her believe you were Louis Philippe, and you made fierce love to your pretty companion, who was fool enough to like you. By Jove! what a rig you must have run! We have all laughed over it a score of times.”
“If I knew who 'we' were, I am certain I should feel flattered by any amusement I afforded them, notwithstanding how much more they are indebted to fiction than fact regarding me. I never assumed to be Louis Philippe, nor affected to be any person of distinction. A flighty old lady was foolish enough to imagine me a prince of the Orleans family—”
“You,—a prince! Oh, this is too absurd!”
“I confess, sir, I cannot see the matter in this light. I presume the mistake to be one by no means difficult to have occurred. Mrs. Keats has seen a deal of life and the world—”