“No, by Jove; they don't pay us so liberally. We have the run of our teeth and no more.”
“You forget your tongue, sir; you are unjust.”
“Why, my Lady, you are as quick as Sir William himself; living with that great wit has made you positively dangerous.”
“I have not enjoyed over-much of the opportunity you speak of.”
“Yes, I know that; no fault of yours, though. The world is agreed on that point. I take it he's about the most impossible man to live with the age has yet produced. Sewell has told me such things of him!—things that would be incredible if I had not seen him.”
“I beg pardon for interrupting, but of course you have not come to dilate on the Chief Baron's defects of temper to his wife.”
“No, only incidentally,—parenthetically, as one may say,—just as one knocks over a hare when he's out partridge-shooting.”
“Never mind the hare, then, sir; keep to your partridges.”
“My partridges! my partridges! which are my partridges? Oh, to be sure! I want to talk to you about Sewell. He has told you perhaps how ill we have behaved to him,—grossly, shamefully ill, I call it.”
“He has told me that the Government object to his having this appointment, but he has not explained on what ground.”