“You ain't a doctor?” asked Quackinboss.
“No, sir; not a physician, at least.”
“That's a pity,” said Quackinboss, slowly, as he brushed the ashes off his cigar. “Help yourself, stranger; that's claret, t'other's the country wine, and this is cognac,—all three bad o' their kind; but, as they say here to everything, 'Come si fa, eh? Come si fa!'”
“It is not from any disparagement of your hospitality, sir,” said Ogden, somewhat pompously, “that I am forced to recall you to my first question.”
“Come si fa!” repeated Quackinboss, still ruminating over the philosophy of that expression, one of the very few he had ever succeeded in committing to memory.
“Am I to conclude, sir, that you decline giving me the information I ask?”
“I ain't in a witness-box, stranger. I 'm a-sittin' at my own fireside. I 'm a-smokin' my Virginian, where I 've a right to, and if you choose to come in neighborly-like, and take a liquor with me, we 'll talk it over, whatever it is; but if you think to come Holy Office and the Inquisition over Shaver Quackinboss, you 've caught the wrong squirrel by the tail, Britisher, you have!”
“I must say, sir, you have put a most forced and unfair construction upon a very simple circumstance. I asked you if the Marquis of Agincourt resided here?”
“And so you ain't a doctor?” said Quackinboss, pensively.
“No, sir; I have already told you as much.”