“Inconvenient, my boy! never say the word. Not to mention that fortune may take a turn one of these days, and all this California find its way back to its own diggings.”
“I don't mean to play any more.”
“Not play any more! Do you mean to say that, because you have been once repulsed, you 'll never charge again? Is that your soldier's pluck?”
“There is no question here of my soldier's pluck. I only said I 'd not play billiards.”
“May I ask you one thing? How can you possibly expect to attain excellence in any pursuit, great or small, when you are so easily abashed?”
“May I take the same liberty with you, and ask how can it possibly concern any one but myself that I have taken this resolution?”
“There you have me! a hazard and no mistake! I may be your match at billiards; but when it comes to repartee, you are the better man, Heathcote.”
Coarse as the flattery was, it was not unpleasing. Indeed, in its very coarseness there was a sort of mock sincerity, just as the stroke of a heavy hand on your shoulder is occasionally taken for good fellowship, though you wince under the blow. Now Heathcote was not only gratified by his own smartness, but after a moment or two he felt half sorry he had been so “severe on the poor fellow.” He had over-shotted his gun, and there was really no necessity to rake him so heavily; and so, with a sort of blundering bashfulness, he said,—
“You 're not offended; you 're not angry with me?”
“Offended! angry! nothing of the kind. I believe I am a peppery sort of fellow,—at least, down in the West there they say as much of me; but once a man is my friend,—once that I feel all straight and fair between us,—he may bowl me over ten times a day, and I 'll never resent it.”