“Explain yourself more fully, sir; you have assumed to call in question the parallelism I would establish between the tie of marriage and the obligation of a solemn trust; state your plea.”
“I 'll do nothing of the kind. I came here this morning to—to—I'll be shot if I remember what I came about; but I know I had something to tell you; let me try and collect myself.”
“Do, sir, if that be the name you give the painful process.”
“There, there; you'll not make me better by ridiculing me. What could it have been that I wanted to tell you?”
“Not, impossibly, some recent impertinence of the press towards myself.”
“I think not,—I think not,” said the other, musingly. “I suppose you 've seen that squib in the 'Banner.'”
“It is a paper, sir, I would not condescend to touch.”
“The fellow says that a Chief Baron without a court,—he means this in allusion to the Crown not bringing those cases of treason-felony into the Exchequer,—a Chief without a court is like one of those bishops in partibus, and that it would n't be an unwise thing to make the resemblance complete and stop the salary. And then another observes—”
“Sir, I do not know which most to deplore,—your forgetfulness or your memory; try to guide your conversation without any demand upon either.”
“And it was about those Celts, as they call these rascals, that I wanted to say something. What could it have been?”