"Precisely!"
"Alas, Sir Maurice, I blush to say that rather than become an unprincipled adventurer living on my wits, or a mean-spirited hanger-on fawning upon acquaintances for a livelihood, or doing anything rather than soil my hands with honest toil, I became a blacksmith fellow some four or five months ago."
"Really it is most distressing to observe to what depths Virtue may drag a man!—you are a very monster of probity and rectitude!" exclaimed Sir Maurice; "indeed I am astonished! you manifested not only shocking bad judgment, but a most deplorable lack of thought (Virtue is damnably selfish as a rule)—really, it is quite disconcerting to find one's self first cousin to a blacksmith—"
"—fellow!" I added.
"Fellow!" nodded Sir Maurice. "Oh, the devil! to think of my worthy cousin reduced to the necessity of laboring with hammer and saw—"
"Not a saw," I put in.
"We will say, chisel, then—a Vibart with hammer and chisel—deuce take me! Most distressing! and, you will pardon my saying so, you do not seem to thrive on hammers and chisels; no one could say you looked blooming, or even flourishing like the young bay tree (which is, I fancy, an Eastern expression)."
"Sir," said I, "may I remind you that I have work to do?"
"A deuced interesting place though, this," he smiled, staring round imperturbably through his glass; "so—er—so devilish grimy and smutty and gritty—quite a number of horseshoes, too. D'ye know, cousin, I never before remarked what a number of holes there are in a horseshoe—but live and learn!" Here he paused to inhale a pinch of snuff, very daintily, from a jewelled box. "It is a strange thing," he pursued, as he dusted his fingers on his handkerchief, "a very strange thing that, being cousins, we have never met till now—especially as I have heard so very much about you."
"Pray," said I, "pray how should you hear about one so very insignificant as myself?"