“Good Heaven, my lord, is it you?”
“Come, Everage; your nerves are all unstrung, and you’re shocked to see me looking so like a ghost. Indeed, I had liked to have been one. But here I am, alive at least, and likely to get well. Come—shall it be Véry’s?”
“No, no, no—not that!” groaned the poor gentleman.
“The green-turtle soup is prime; now shall we go to that place in the Exchange?”
“No, no, no, Lord Killcrichtoun! I can go nowhere to eat or to drink with you! I cannot! I cannot! Heaven have mercy on me! I am a lost soul.”
“Why, what is the matter with you, Everage?”
“I am ill, ill, ill!”
“Your nervous system is broken down; life has been too hard with you, my friend! But come—I have news for you that will cheer you up! Let us drop into the nearest tavern, and get a private room, where we may converse confidentially,—here is the ‘King’s Head’ near, shall we go there and have something comfortable?”
“No, no, no; I told you I would go nowhere to eat or drink with you, my lord!”
“Is your digestive apparatus so much out of order as all that? Well, then, if you don’t go to eat and drink, we will go to talk. I tell you I have news for you—‘you will hear of something to your advantage,’ as the mysterious newspaper paragraphs say.”