“An insult to poverty, Miss Candituft—an insult;” and Colonel Bones smiled a hard smile, and his dark, deep sunk eyes twinkled from behind his ragged eyebrows. “Too bad of our host to drag a beggar like me here: really too bad. Tyrannous, tyrannous to scourge poverty with golden rods. Humph?” And the Colonel looked around.
“I dare say you can bear it, Colonel,” answered Miss Candituft, staring at him, and reading in the human antiquity the hidden mystery of wealth. Before the eyes of the far-seeing spinster the heart of Colonel Bones lay all revealed; open, discovered, like the valley of diamonds. “You can bear it;” and saying this, the smiling lady drew the very best flower from her bouquet, and threaded it in the Colonel’s button-hole.
“Ugh!” said Colonel Bones, with a grim smile looking down upon the operation. “Ugh! Winter, winter adorned by spring. Oh dear! Why will you take such pains to spoil a beggar? Eh? Humph?” ended the Colonel, with his usual spasm of interrogation.
At this moment Candituft and Jericho advanced to the party. Colonel Bones, with a sudden jerk, was moving off, when Candituft stept forward, with open hand.
“Ugh! No, sir; I can’t do it—I won’t do it. The fact is, sir,—though this is not the place to name it—the fact is, it was I, Colonel Bones, who on Saturday last black-balled you at the Cut-and-come.” Thus spoke Bones, and somewhat defyingly.
“My good Colonel,” said Candituft very meekly, “I know it. What then? It was a mistake.”
“No mistake at all, sir; not a bit; I’d do it again to-morrow. Wouldn’t I? Humph?”
“Because, my dear Colonel, you don’t know me. Ignorance causes all the family quarrels of the brotherhood of man. I lament your error; but I have no malice. And what is human life,—what is moral dignity, if it can’t live down these small mistakes? The brotherhood of man, my dear sir.”
“Eh? What? There you are, at it again, Candituft! The brotherhood of man! When you come out to enjoy yourself, why the devil can’t you leave all your poor relations at home?”
“Ha! Commissioner, glad to see you. Why, you look as flourishing and as bountiful as one of your own bread-trees. It’s food and lodging to behold you.” This was the ready, flattering reply of Candituft to a short, thick, very black, and very red man, who had the look of having been dried like pepper, hard and hot, in a fiery climate; though there were people who, when Commissioner Thrush talked of his travels in Siam, stared very doubtingly upon the boastful rover. Be such doubts just or unjust, the Commissioner made a very good use of the king of Siam; putting off upon the royal whim, or royal wisdom, his own jest. Thus, when Commissioner Thrush wanted to shoot at impertinence or folly, he would very modestly shoot with the king of Siam’s proper long-bow.