“Ah, Davis, my dear friend,” said he, with a benevolent smile, “it's far easier to live down a bad reputation than to live up to a good one. I 'd only ask a week—one week's domestication with the company of these places—to show I was a martyred saint. I have, so to say, a perennial fount of goodness in my nature that has never failed me.”
“I remember it at school,” said Davis, dryly.
“You took the clever line, Kit, 'suum cuique;' it would never have suited me. You were born to thrive upon men's weaknesses, mine the part to have a vested interest in their virtues.”
“If you depend upon their virtues for a subsistence, I 'm not surprised to see you out at elbows,” said Davis, roughly.
“Not so, Kit,—not so,” said the other, blandly, in rebuke. “There 's a great deal of weak good-nature always floating about life. The world is full of fellows with 'Pray take me in' written upon them.”
“I can only vouch for it very few have come in my way,” said Davis, with a harsh laugh.
“So much the better for them,” said Paul, gravely.
A pause of considerable duration now ensued between them, broken, at last, by Davis abruptly saying, “Is it not a strange thing, it was only last night I was saying to myself, 'What the deuce has become of Holy Paul?—the newspapers have seemingly forgotten him. It can't be that he is dead.'”
“Lazarus only sleepeth,” said Classon; “and, indeed, my last eleven weeks here seem little other than a disturbed sleep.”
Continuing his own train of thought, Davis went on, “If I could chance upon him now, he's just the fellow I want, or, rather, that I may want.”