"He was a courier," said the gardener. "He's had a deal of experience. And I believe, by what I can make out—for he's been pretty free with me sometimes—there was a time when he was in that rank of life that he fought a duel."
"Ah! that makes him such a cool chap," said Mr. Crowder.
"He's what I call an overbearing fellow," said Mr. Sircome, also sotto voce, to his next neighbor, Mr. Filmore, the surgeon's assistant. "He runs you down with a sort of talk that's neither here nor there. He's got a deal too many samples in his pocket for me."
"All I know is, he's a wonderful hand at cards," said Mr. Filmore, whose whiskers and shirt-pin were quite above the average. "I wish I could play écarté as he does; it's beautiful to see him; he can make a man look pretty blue; he'll empty his pocket for him in no time."
"That's none to his credit," said Mr. Sircome.
The conversation had in this way broken up into tête-à-tête, and the hilarity of the evening might be considered a failure. Still the punch was drunk, the accounts were duly swelled, and, notwithstanding the innovating spirit of the time, Sir Maximus Debarry's establishment was kept up in sound hereditary British manner.
CHAPTER VIII.
"Rumor doth double like the voice and echo."
—Shakespeare.
The mind of a man is as a country which was once open to squatters, who have bred and multiplied and become masters of the land. But then happeneth a time when new and hungry comers dispute the land; and there is trial of strength, and the stronger wins. Nevertheless the first squatters be they who have prepared the ground, and the crops to the end will be sequent (though chiefly on the nature of the soil, as of light sand, mixed loam, or heavy clay, yet) somewhat on the primal labor and sowing.