“Oh, yes, you have! I have seen many of them, and you need not be ashamed to own them, for there is nothing of the kind in literature to surpass them. Why, there’s ——,” and she ran on with a ready list of what she termed works, not a little to the surprise of Manton, who only listened with a cold stare, and bowed profoundly, as she concluded with a high-wrought panegyric.
“I am sorry I have no such works in my possession, nor can I tell you where they can be obtained!”
The woman grew very red in the face again, and bit her lips in vexation, while Manton remained silent. She soon rallied, however, and commenced a conversation upon the general literature of the day, in which Manton, in spite of himself, was gradually interested, by a certain sharp epigrammatic method of uttering heresies, and bold paradoxes, which seemed to be peculiar to her mind, and which could not but prove refreshing to one, who, like Manton, most heartily detested commonplace.
He, however, did not unbend in the slightest, and the woman, who finally, in despair of “getting at him,” rose to depart, said, yet perseveringly, with winning badinage—
“I find you in a naughty humor to-day. You are as cold as an iceberg and sharp as a nor’wester. When you get to be a good boy, you may come and see me!”
“When I do, madam, I shall surely come!” was the response, accompanied by a very low bow, and delivered in a tone that would have frost-bitten the ear of a polar bear.
The discomfited woman hurried from the parlor with the blood almost bursting from her face, while Manton, turning on his heel, muttered—
“Well! if that does not freeze her off, she ought to be canonised!”
CHAPTER XI.
CARRIED BY STORM.
You call it an ill angel—it may be so;