“Done, sir; I take you,” said I, quickly.
“Well; you 're in cutlery, or hardware, or lace goods, or ribbons, or alpaca cloth, or drugs, ain't you?”
“I am not, sir,” was my stern reply.
“Not a bagman?”
“Not a bagman, sir.”
“Well, you 're an usher in a commercial academy, or 'our own correspondent,' or a telegraph clerk?”
“I 'm none of these, sir. And I now beg to remind you, that instead of one guess, you have made about a dozen.”
“Well, you 've won, there's no denying it,” said he, taking a sovereign from his waistcoat-pocket and handing it to me. “It's deuced odd how I should be mistaken. I 'd have sworn you were a bagman!” But for the impertinence of these last words I should have declined to accept his lost bet, but I took it now as a sort of vindication of my wounded feelings. “Now it's all over and ended,” said he, calmly, “what are you? I don't ask out of any impertinent curiosity, but that I hate being foiled in a thing of this kind. What are you?”
“I 'll tell you what I am, sir,” said I, indignantly, for now I was outraged beyond endurance,—“I 'll tell you, sir, what I am, and what I feel myself,—one singularly unlucky in a travelling-companion.”
“Bet you a five-pound note you're not,” broke he in. “Give you six to five on it, in anything you like.”