'Your business, Sir?' said I, rising with a dignity, which, from my being under the repeated necessity of assuming it, has now become natural to me.
'To make a personal apology,' replied he, 'for the disrespectful and inhospitable treatment which the loveliest of her sex experienced at my house.'
'An apology for one insult,' said I, 'must seem insincere, when the mode adopted for making it is another insult.'
'The retort is exquisitely elegant,' answered he, 'but I trust, not true. For, granting, my dear Madam, that I offer a second insult by my intrusion, still I may lessen the first insult so much by my apology that the sum of both may be less than the first, as it originally stood.'
'Really,' said I, 'you have blended politeness and arithmetic so happily together; you have clothed multiplication and subtraction in such polished phraseology——'
'Good!' cried he, 'that is real wit.'
'You have added so much algebra to so much sentiment,' continued I.
'Good, good!' interrupted he again.
'In short, you have apologized so gracefully by the rule of three, that I know not which has assisted you the most—Chesterfield or Cocker.'
'Inimitable,' exclaimed he. 'Really your retorting powers are superior to those of any heroine on record.'