"Sir," said Willis, "I don't think it's fair like,—not decent, if you'll excuse an old sailor,—to talk about young maids' affairs, that they wouldn't talk of themselves, perhaps not even to themselves. So I never asked any questions myself."
"And think it rude in me to ask any. Well, I believe you're right, good old gentleman that you are. What a nobleman you'd have made, if you had had the luck to have been born in that station of life!"
"I have found too much trouble, in doing my duty in my humble place, to wish to be in any higher one."
"So!" thought Tom to himself, "a girl's fancy: but it explains so much in the character, especially when the temperament is melancholic. However, to quote Solomon once more, 'A live dog is better than a dead lion;' and I have not much to fear from a rival who has been washed out of this world ten years since. Heyday! Rival! quotha? Tom Thurnall, you are going to make a fool of yourself. You must go, sir! I warn you; you must flee, till you have recovered your senses."
There appeared next morning in Tom's shop a new phenomenon. A smart youth, dressed in what he considered to be the newest London fashion; but which was really that translation of last year's fashion which happened to be current in the windows of the Bodmin tailors. Tom knew him by sight and name,—one Mr. Creed, a squireen like Trebooze, and an especial friend of Trebooze's, under whose tutelage he had learned to smoke cavendish assiduously from the age of fifteen, thereby improving neither his stature, nor his digestion, his nerves, nor the intelligence of his countenance.
He entered with a lofty air, and paused awhile as he spoke.
"Is it possible," said Tom to himself, "that Trebooze has sent me a challenge? It would be too good fun. I'll wait and see." So he went on rolling pills.
"I say, sir," quoth the youth, who had determined, as an owner of land, to treat the doctor duly de haut en bas, and had a vague notion that a liberal use of the word "sir" would both help thereto, and be consonant with professional style of duel diplomacy, whereof he had read in novels.
Tom turned slowly, and then took a long look at him over the counter through halfshut eye-lids, with chin upraised, as if he had been suddenly afflicted with short sight; and worked on meanwhile steadily at his pills.
"That is, I wish—to speak to you, sir—ahem—!" went on Mr. Creed; being gradually but surely discomfited by Tom's steady gaze.