“Gout! what's that?” inquired Mr. Bassett.
“Don't ask me.”
“You don't know.
“Not know! What, didn't I tell you I was Rolfe the writer? Writers know everything. That is what makes them so modest.”
Mr. Bassett was now unnaturally silent for five minutes, munching chestnuts; this enabled his guests to converse; but as soon as he had cleared his plate, he cut right across the conversation, with that savage contempt for all topics but his own which characterizes gentlemen of his age, and says he to Rolfe, “You know everything? Then what's a parson's brat?”
“Well, that's the one thing I don't know,” said Rolfe; “but a brat I take to be a boy who interrupts ladies and gentlemen with nonsense when they are talking sense.”
“I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Rolfe,” said Lady Bassett. “That remark was very much needed.”
Then she called Reginald to her, and lectured him, sotto voce, to the same tune.
“You old bachelors are rather hard,” said Sir Charles, not very well pleased.
“We are obliged to be; you parents are so soft. After all, it is no wonder. What a superb boy it is!—Here is nurse. I'm so sorry. Now we shall be cabined, cribbed, confined to rational conversation, and I shall not be expected to—(good-night, little flaxen angel; good-by, handsome and loquacious demon; kiss and be friends)—expected to know, all in a minute, what is a parson's brat. By-the-by, talking of parsons, what has become of Angelo?”