"No, I am waiting for you to quote it."
"Here it is; 'If you wish for your company, deal the cards.'"
"I do not understand."
"Why, nothing is easier, as you shall see."
"I wish for nothing better," the girl said, who was extraordinary amused by this conversation.
The stranger rose, placed the cards in his pocket with the respect every professional gambler shews to this operation, and, carelessly leaning on the neck of the girl's horse, he said:
"Owing to reasons too long to narrate, I find myself alone, lost in this immense prairie which I do not know, I an honest inhabitant of towns, not at all conversant with the manners and habits of the desert, and consequently exposed to die of hunger."
"Pardon me for interrupting you; I would merely observe that as we are some three hundred miles from the nearest town, you, the civilised man, must have been wandering about the desert for a considerable length of time."
"That is true: what you say could not be more correct, comrade, but that results from what I mentioned just now, and which would take too long to tell you."
"Very good; go on."