"We can then amuse ourselves with my grandmother and the young ladies," I answered, "when we reach the Nest. For my part, it strikes me that we had better keep our own secret to the last moment."
"Hush! As I live, there is Seneca Newcome this moment! He is coming this way, and we must be Germans again."
Sure enough, there was 'Squire Seneky, as the honest farmers around the Nest call him; though many of them must change their practices, or it will shortly become so absurd to apply the term "honest" to them, that no one will have the hardihood to use it. Newcome came slowly toward the forecastle, on which we were standing; and my uncle determined to get into conversation with him, as a means of further proving the virtue of our disguises, as well as possibly of opening the way to some communications that might facilitate our visit to the Nest. With this view, the pretended pedler drew a watch from his pocket, and offering it meekly to the inspection of the quasi lawyer, he said—
"Puy a vatch, shentlemans?"
"Hey! what? Oh a watch," returned Seneca, in that high, condescending, vulgar key, with which the salt of the earth usually affect to treat those they evidently think much beneath them in intellect, station, or some other great essential, at the very moment they are bursting with envy, and denouncing as aristocrats all who are above them. "Hey! a watch is it? What countryman are you, friend?"
"A Charmans—ein Teutscher."
"A German—ine Tycher is the place you come from, I s'pose?"
"Nein—ein Teutscher isht a Charman."
"Oh, yes! I understand. How long have you been in Ameriky?"
"Twelf moont's."