“Ah, my reverend friend, you here!” said the other, in evident confusion. “I never so much as suspected you were coming in this direction.”
Paul Classon and Terry Driscoll stared long and significantly at each other. Of all those silences, which are more eloquent than words, none can equal that interval in which two consummate knaves exchange glances of recognition, so complete an appreciation is there of each other's gifts, such an honest, unaffected, frank interchange of admiration.
“You are a clever fellow, Driscoll, you are!” said Paul, admiringly.
“No, no. The Lord help me, I'm a poor crayture,” said Terry, shaking his head despondingly.
“Don't believe it, man,—don't believe it,” said Paul, clapping him on the shoulder; “you have great natural gifts. Your face alone is worth a thousand a year, and you have a shuffling, shambling way of coming into a room that's better than an account at Coutts's. Joe Norris used to say that a slight palsy he had in one hand was worth twelve hundred a year to him at billiards alone.”
“What a droll man you are, Mr. Classon!” said Terry, wiping his eyes as he laughed. And again they looked at each other long and curiously.
“Driscoll,” said Paul, after a considerable pause, “on which side do you hold your brief?”
“My brief! God knows it's little I know about brief and parchments,” sighed Terry, heavily.
“Come, come, man, what's the use of fencing? I see your hand; I know every trump in it.”
Driscoll shook his head, and muttered something about the “faver that destroyed him entirely.”