“Look you,” thumping down his rifle, “are you Jeremy Diddler No. 3?”
“Jeremy Diddler? I have heard of Jeremy the prophet, and Jeremy Taylor the divine, but your other Jeremy is a gentleman I am unacquainted with.”
“You are his confidential clerk, ain’t you?”
“Whose, pray? Not that I think myself unworthy of being confided in, but I don’t understand.”
“You are another of them. Somehow I meet with the most extraordinary metaphysical scamps to-day. Sort of visitation of them. And yet that herb-doctor Diddler somehow takes off the raw edge of the Diddlers that come after him.”
“Herb-doctor? who is he?”
“Like you—another of them.”
“Who?” Then drawing near, as if for a good long explanatory chat, his left hand spread, and his pipe-stem coming crosswise down upon it like a ferule, “You think amiss of me. Now to undeceive you, I will just enter into a little argument and——”
“No you don’t. No more little arguments for me. Had too many little arguments to-day.”
“But put a case. Can you deny—I dare you to deny—that the man leading a solitary life is peculiarly exposed to the sorriest misconceptions touching strangers?”