The mixture was brought—for two.
“I suppose you have no objection to my smoking?” coolly said the man in the room.
“Not at all,” I remarked; “this is perfectly lovely; I enjoy it all.”
He pulled out his pocket-book and his pencil, crossed his legs, and having drawn a long whiff from his cigar, he said:
“I see that you have no lecture to deliver in Brushville; may I ask you what you have come here for?”
“Now,” said I, “what the deuce is that to you? If this is the kind of questions you have to ask me, you go——”
He pocketed the rebuff, and went on undisturbed:
“How are you struck with Brushville?”
“I am struck,” said I, “with the cheek of some of the inhabitants. I have driven to this hotel from the depot in a closed carriage, and I have seen nothing of your city.”
The man wrote down something.