“Lord! how he must have worked you!” cried Davis, with an insolent grin.
“Ain't such a flat as you think me, Master Grog. Solomon was a wise man, and Samson a strong one, and A. B. can hold his own with most 'in the ruck.'”
A most contemptuous look was the only answer Davis condescended to this speech. At last, after he had lighted a fresh cigar, and puffed it into full work, he said, “Well, what was it he had to say to you?”
“Oh, we talked away of everything; and, by Jupiter! he knows a little of everything. Such a memory, too; remembers every fellow that was in power the last fifty years, and can tell you how he was 'squared,' for it 's all on the 'cross' with them, Grog, just as in the ring. Every fellow rides to order, and half the running one sees is no race! Any hot water to be had?”
“No, there's cold in that jug yonder. Well, go on with Dunn.”
“He is very agreeable, I must say; for, besides having met everybody, he knows all their secret history,—how this one got out of his scrape, and why that went into the hole. You see in a moment how much he must be trusted, and that he can make his book on life as safe as the Bank of England. Fearfully strong that gin is!”
“No, it ain't,” said Grog, rudely; “it's not the velvety tipple Dunn gave you, but it's good British gin, that's what it is.”
“You would n't believe, too, how much he knows about women! He's up to everything that's going on in town. Very strange that, for a fellow like him! Don't you think so?”
Davis made no answer, but puffed away slowly. “And after women, what came next?”
“He talked next—let me see—about books. How he likes Becky Sharp,—how he enjoys her! He says that character will do the same service as the published discovery of some popular fraud; and that the whole race of Beckys now are detected swindlers,—nothing less.”