“No you will not, nor within ten years.”
“That is soon seen. I call her one-and-twenty.”
“One-and-twenty! You are mad! Why, she has had a child that would be fifteen now if it had lived.”
“Miss Lucy? A child? Fifteen years? What on earth do you mean?”
“What do you mean? What has Miss Lucy to do with it? You know very well it is MY WIFE I am warning you against, not that innocent girl.”
At this David burst out in his turn. “YOUR WIFE! and have you so vile an opinion of me as to think I would eat your bread and tempt your wife under your roof. Oh, Mr. Bazalgette, is this the esteem you profess for me?”
“Go to the Devil!” shouted Bazalgette, in double ire at his own blunder and at being taken to task by his own Telemachus; he added, but in a very different tone, “You are too good for this world.”
The best things we say miss fire in conversation; only second-rate shots hit the mind through the ear. This, we will suppose, is why David derived no amusement or delectation from Mr. Bazalgette's inadvertent but admirable bon-mot.
“Go to the Devil! you are too good for this world.”
He merely rose, and said gravely, “Heaven forgive you your unjust suspicions, and God bless you for your other kindness. Good-by!”