“Take care—take care; you’ll make me think you haven’t!” cried Poupin with his excited expression.
“That’s just what I want,” said Muniment.
“Nun, I understand,” the cabinet-maker remarked, restoring his pipe to his lips after an interval almost as momentous as the stoppage of a steamer in mid-ocean.
“’Ere, ’ere?” repeated the small shoemaker indignantly. “I daresay it’s as good as the place he came from. He might look in and see what he thinks of it.”
“That’s a place you might tell us a little about now,” the fat man suggested as if he had been waiting for his chance.
Before the shoemaker had time to notice this challenge some one inquired with a hoarse petulance who the bloody blazes they were talking about; and Mr. Schinkel took upon himself to reply that they were talking about a man who hadn’t done what he had done by simply exchanging abstract ideas, however valuable, with his friends in a respectable pot-house.
“What the devil has he done then?” some one else demanded; and Muniment replied quietly that he had spent twelve years in a Prussian prison and was consequently still an object of a good deal of interest to the police.
“Well, if you call that very useful I must say I prefer a pot-house!” cried the shoemaker, appealing to all the company and looking, as it appeared to Hyacinth, particularly hideous.
“Doch, doch, it’s useful,” the German remarked philosophically among his yellow clouds.
“Do you mean to say you’re not prepared for that yourself?” Muniment asked of the shoemaker.