“Why, you talk of your grocer's boy as if he were a Cabinet Minister, Mr. Martin; you treat him like a great diplomatist!”
“It was not exactly on the first occasion of his being in my house that I could have broached the matter.”
“Which implies that you mean to invite him again.”
“Possibly!” was the abrupt rejoinder.
“And must the odious attorney always be of the party?”
“No, madam, the odious attorney has set out for Dublin; but I shortly expect here one whom your Ladyship will, doubtless, call an odious lawyer,—though he happens to be one of the foremost men of the Irish bar.”
“A class I detest,” said her Ladyship.
“He has one consolation, at least, madam,” said Martin; “he figures in a pretty long category.”
“And why should he not, sir? What have I ever met in the dreary eighteen years and seven months I have passed here, except unmitigated self-conceit, vulgarity, and presumption,—the very type of all three being your Dublin barrister.”
“Their countrymen certainly entertain another estimate of them,” said Martin, laughing, for he had a lazy man's enjoyment of any passionate excitement of another's temper.