“No,” I said, “not just; half a minute after.”
“You dirty, sneaky, French beast!” he cried. “I bring you to a decent house—the first you've ever been to—and you go shamming * sick to get a chance of insulting a virtuous girl!”
“Shamming!” I cried. “Insulting! What words are these?”
“Do you mean to say you aren't shamming? You can walk as well as me!”
* It is a legend among the English that we subsist
principally upon frogs.—-D'H.
Unquestionably I was more recovered than I had admitted to myself while convalescence was so pleasant, and now I had risen from my couch I discovered, to my surprise, that there seemed little the matter with me. That, however, could not excuse the imputation. Besides, I had been addressed by several epithets, each one of which conveyed an insult.
“You vile, low, little English pig!” I replied; “you know the consequences of your language, I suppose?”
“I'm glad to see it makes you sit up,” he replied.
I advanced a step and struck him on the face, and then, seeing that he was about to assault me with his fists, I laid him on the floor with a well-directed kick on the chest.
“Now,” I said, as he rose, “will you fight, or are you afraid?”