"Yes, yes," said Mr. Scales; "I'm no fool myself, and could parry a thrust if I liked, but I shouldn't like it to be said of me that I was up to everything. I'll keep a little principle if you please."
"To be sure," said Christian, ladling out the punch. "What would justice be without Scales?"
The laughter was not quite so full-throated as before. Such excessive cleverness was a little Satanic.
"A joke's a joke among gentlemen," said the butler, getting exasperated; "I think there has been quite liberties enough taken with my name. But if you must talk about names, I've heard of a party before now calling himself a Christian, and being anything but it."
"Come, that's beyond a joke," said the surgeon's assistant, a fast man, whose chief scene of dissipation was the manor. "Let it drop, Scales."
"Yes, I dare say it's beyond a joke. I'm not a harlequin to talk nothing but jokes. I leave that to other Christians, who are up to everything, and have been everywhere—to the hulks, for what I know; and more than that, they come from nobody knows where, and try to worm themselves into gentlemen's confidence, to the prejudice of their betters."
There was a stricter sequence in Mr. Scales's angry eloquence than was apparent—some chief links being confined to his own breast, as is often the case in energetic discourse. The company were in a state of expectation. There was something behind worth knowing, and something before them worth seeing. In the general decay of other fine British pugnacious sports, a quarrel between gentlemen was all the more exciting, and though no one would himself have liked to turn on Scales, no one was sorry for the chance of seeing him put down. But the amazing Christian was unmoved. He had taken out his handkerchief and was rubbing his lips carefully. After a slight pause, he spoke with perfect coolness.
"I don't intend to quarrel with you, Scales. Such talk as this is not profitable to either of us. It makes you purple in the face—you are apoplectic, you know—and it spoils good company. Better tell a few fibs about me behind my back—it will heat you less, and do me more harm. I'll leave you to it; I shall go and have a game of whist with the ladies."
As the door closed behind the questionable Christian, Mr. Scales was in a state of frustration that prevented speech. Every one was rather embarrassed.
"That's an uncommon sort o' fellow," said Mr. Crowder, in an undertone, to his next neighbor, the gardener. "Why, Mr. Philip picked him up in foreign parts, didn't he?"