‘I make you my compliment,’ said I. ‘You are able to take care of yourself, and that is a good trait. But, my good man! let us look at this matter dispassionately. You are not a coward, and no more am I; we are both men of excellent sense; I have good reason, whatever it may be, to keep my concerns to myself and to walk alone. Now I put it to you pointedly, am I likely to stand it? Am I likely to put up with your continued and—excuse me—highly impudent ingérence into my private affairs?’
‘Another French word,’ says he composedly.
‘Oh! damn your French words!’ cried I. ‘You seem to be a Frenchman yourself!’
‘I have had many opportunities by which I have profited,’ he explained. ‘Few men are better acquainted with the similarities and differences, whether of idiom or accent, of the two languages.’
‘You are a pompous fellow, too!’ said I.
‘Oh, I can make distinctions, sir,’ says he. ‘I can talk with Bedfordshire peasants; and I can express myself becomingly, I hope, in the company of a gentleman of education like yourself.’
‘If you set up to be a gentleman—’ I began.
‘Pardon me,’ he interrupted: ‘I make no such claim. I only see the nobility and gentry in the way of business. I am quite a plain person.’
‘For the Lord’s sake,’ I exclaimed, ‘set my mind at rest upon one point. In the name of mystery, who and what are you?’
‘I have no cause to be ashamed of my name, sir,’ said he, ‘nor yet my trade. I am Thomas Dudgeon, at your service, clerk to Mr. Daniel Romaine, solicitor of London; High Holborn is our address, sir.’