“Ah! I knew you must have had a dash of John Bull in you. No man ever spoke such English as yours without it.”
“Well, but my English temperament goes two generations back. I don't believe my father was ever in England.”
With this opening they talked away about national traits and peculiarities: the Frenchman with all the tact and acuteness travel and much intercourse with life conferred; and the other with the especial shrewdness that marks a Londoner. “How did you guess I was a Cockney?” asked he, laughingly. “I don't take liberties with my H 's.”
“If you had, it's not likely I'd have known it,” said Pracontal. “But your reference to town, the fidelity with which you clung to what London would think of this, or say to that, made me suspect you to be a Londoner; and I see I was right.”
“After all, you Frenchmen are just as full of Paris.”
“Because Paris epitomizes France, and France is the greatest of all countries.”
“I 'll not stand that. I deny it in toto.”
“Well, I'll not open the question now, or maybe you'd make me give up this blanket.”
“No. I 'll have the matter out on fair grounds. Keep the blanket, but just let me hear on what grounds you claim precedence for France before England.”
“I'm too unlucky in matters of dispute to-day,” said Pracontal, sadly, “to open a new discussion. I quarrelled with, perhaps, the best friend I had in the world this morning for a mere nothing; and though there is little fear that anything we could say to each other now would provoke ill feeling between us, I 'll run no risks.”