The colonel was like Mr. Dibbits in one particular—he had the greatest respect for big names.
"My dear fellow," said he, "why did you not tell me all this before?"
"You didn't give me a chance to tell you," replied Oscar bluntly. "You snubbed me most unmercifully whenever I——"
"Aw!" interrupted the colonel; "that's all past and gone, and we will consider that it never happened. The fact is, we Englishmen don't know how to fall in with the free-and-easy ways you Americans have. We don't take up with every Tom, Dick, and Harry that comes along. We want to know who a man is before we open our hearts to him."
"For all that, I should think you might be gentleman enough to treat a stranger civilly when he approaches you in a civil way."
The boy did not utter these words aloud, although he wanted to, for he did not at all like the colonel. The latter had snubbed him more than once, and Oscar could not forget it.
"I wonder what he would say now if I should ask him to hunt in company with me?" thought our hero. "I'll not try the experiment, for he might consent, and I don't think I want him. I wouldn't sell out if I were in your place, colonel," he said aloud. "You must have spent a good deal of money in getting here. I know I did, and I never wasted a shilling; and I wouldn't let those fellows"—here he nodded his head toward the men who were gathered about the bar—"have the satisfaction of knowing that they had beaten me. Take this chair, and I will tell you something."
Oscar and the colonel seated themselves in front of one of the windows, with their backs toward the bar, and the former gave a short account of his experience with one of the cattle-dealers. What it was we shall presently see.