A tall, good-looking man of two or three-and-twenty, who was leaning his head on one hand and staring out of the window, turned round and said dreamily, "What?"
"What an amusing companion you are!" said Mr. Pringle; "what a charming remark that was when you last spoke, an hour and twenty minutes ago! What was it?"
"Don't be an idiot, Pringle!"
"No, it wasn't that; to be told to avoid an impossibility would have struck me as novel. Never mind; I was going to ask who that was I saw you speaking to at the King's Cross Terminus yesterday."
"At King's Cross?" said Prescott, colouring; "oh, that was a friend of mine, a clergyman."
"Ah!" said Pringle, quietly, "I thought so. He had on a blue bonnet and a black-lace shawl. Neat foot he's got; those parsons are always so particular about their stockings!"
"Don't be an ass, George!" growled Prescott, in an undertone.
"All right, old boy!" said Pringle, in the same key. "Forgot we weren't alone. Nobody heard, I think; but I'll soon change the subject;" and he commenced whistling Il Bacio, loud and shrill.
"Mr. Pringle! Mr. Pringle!" screamed Mr. Dibb.
Mr. Pringle held up his hand as if deprecating interruption until he had come to the end of the bar, when he said, with mock politeness, "Sir to you!"