The youth coloured.
“That's me, of course.”
“Wear the cap if it feels comfortable. And now, will you have some tea?”
“Anything—I feel as thirsty as when you found me dragging myself to the brink of the Tchernaya. Hey, Doctor, it would have saved me a deal of bother if you had never found me at all. Except that it would vex the old governor to end the name and have the property all going to the dogs,—that is, to Cousin Charteris; who would not care how soon I was dead and buried.”
“Were dead and buried, if you please.”
“Confound it, to stop a man about his grammar when he is in my state of mind! Kept from his cigar, too! Doctor, you never were in love, or you never were a smoker.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you never could have given up the one or the other; a fellow can't; 'tis an impossibility.”
“Is it? I once smoked six cigars a day, for two years.”
“Eh, what? And you never let that out before? You are so close! Possibly, the other fact will peep out in time Mrs. Urquhart and half-a-dozen brats may be living in some out-of-the-way nook—Cornwall, or Jersey, or the centre of Salisbury Plain. Why, what?—nay, I beg your pardon, Doctor.”