"You wish to make a proposal to me, then?"
"Yes."
"What about, if you please?"
"About the affair we discussed this evening at the Paso."
"Why, I fancied we had settled all that, and you accepted my offer."
"Not yet, not yet, my master. That will depend on the conversation we are about to have, so you had better dismount and sit down quietly by my side; for if you don't do it, it will come to nothing."
"The deuce take people that change their minds every minute, and on whom one cannot reckon more than on an old surplice!" the monk growled with an air of annoyance, while, for all that, getting off his mule, which he fastened to a shrub.
The squatter did not seem to remark the chaplain's ill temper, and let him sit down by his side without uttering a syllable.
"Here I am," the monk went on, so soon as he was seated. "I really do not know, Red Cedar, why I yield so easily to all your whims."
"Because you suspect that your interest depends on it: were it not for that, you would not do so."