“Well,” said I, “I am afraid your own practice is not very different from that which you have been just now describing: you sided with the radical in the public-house against me, as long as you thought him the most powerful, and then turned against him when you saw he was cowed. What have you to say to that?”
“O! when one is in Rome, I mean England, one must do as they do in England; I was merely conforming to the custom of the country, he! he! but I beg your pardon here, as I did in the public-house I made a mistake.”
“Well,” said I, “we will drop the matter; but pray seat yourself on that stone, and I will sit down on the grass near you.”
The man in black, after proffering two or three excuses for occupying what he supposed to be my seat, sat down upon the stone, and I squatted down gypsy fashion, just opposite to him, Belle sitting on her stool at a slight distance on my right.
After a time I addressed him thus. “Am I to reckon this a mere visit of ceremony? Should it prove so, it will be, I believe, the first visit of the kind ever paid me.”
“Will you permit me to ask,” said the man in black,—“the weather is very warm,” said he, interrupting himself, and taking off his hat.
I now observed that he was partly bald, his red hair having died away from the fore part of his crown; his forehead was high, his eyebrows scanty, his eyes,
grey and sly, with a downward tendency, his nose was slightly aquiline, his mouth rather large—a kind of sneering smile played continually on his lips, his complexion was somewhat rubicund.
“A bad countenance,” said Belle, in the language of the roads, observing that my eyes were fixed on his face.
“Does not my countenance please you, fair damsel?” said the man in black, resuming his hat and speaking in a peculiarly gentle voice.