"Which may look like blood, and yet not be it."
"Like what, sir?—damn my rags!"
"Begone, begone."
The stranger uttered these words so peremptorily that the landlord hastily left the room, and going into his own bar, he gave himself so small a tap on the side of the head, that it would not have hurt a fly, as he said,—
"I could punch myself into bits, I could tear my hair out by the roots;" and then he pulled a little bit of his hair, so gently and tenderly that it showed what a man of discretion he was, even in the worst of all his agony of passion.
"The idea," he added, "of a fellow coming here, paying four guineas a week for board and lodging, telling me he would not have minded eight, and then not wanting any breakfast; it's enough to aggravate half a dozen saints; but what an odd fish he looks."
At this moment the ostler came in, and, standing at the bar, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve, as he said,—
"I suppose you'll stand a quart for that, master?"
"A quart for what, you vagabond? A quart because I've done myself up in heaps; a quart because I'm fit to pull myself into fiddlestrings?"
"No," said the ostler; "because I've just put up the gentleman's horse."