‘I am much obliged to you,’ Edgar said admiringly; ‘I would give something to have your pluck and coolness.’
‘Practice,’ replied the American dryly. ‘That isn’t what I call a scrape—that’s only a little amusement. But I was rather glad you were with me. I like the look of your face; there’s plenty of character there. As to that pesky young snip, if I’d known he was going to slip off like that, do you think I should have bothered about his money for him? No, sir.’
‘I fancy he was too frightened to say or do much.’
‘Perhaps so.—Have a cigar?—I daresay he’s some worn-out roué of eighteen, all his nerves destroyed by late hours and dissipation, at a time when he ought to be still at his books.’
‘Do you always get over a thing as calmly as this affair?’ asked Edgar, at the same time manipulating one of his companion’s huge cigars. ‘I don’t think dissipation has had much effect on your nerves.’
‘Well, it don’t, and that’s a fact,’ Mr Slimm admitted candidly; ‘and I’ve had my fling too.—I tell you what it is, Mr—Mr’——
‘Seaton—Edgar Seaton is my name.’
‘Well, Mr Seaton, I’ve looked death in the face too often to be put out by a little thing like that. When a man has slept, as I have, in the mines with a matter of one thousand ounces of gold in his tent for six weeks, among the most awful blackguards in the world, and plucky blackguards too, his nerves are fit for most anything afterwards. That’s what I done, ay, and had to fight for it more than once.’
‘But that does not seem so bad as some dangers.’
‘Isn’t it?’ replied the American with a shudder. ‘When you wake up and find yourself in bed with a rattlesnake, you’ve got a chance then; when you are on the ground with a panther over you, there is just a squeak then; but to go to sleep expecting to wake up with a knife in your ribs, is quite another apple.—Well, I must say good-night. Here is Covent Garden. I am staying at the Bedford. Come and breakfast with me to-morrow, and don’t forget to ask for Æneas Slimm.’