"He? Oh, no! There's this Quixotic chivalry again! You listen, my dear fellow? He will let the man purchase his freedom,—if he don't lend him the money to do it himself! Ha! ha! ha!"
"But," said Mr. Dean, "I've tried St. George's plan, on his recommendation, these three or four months, Humphreys,—not wishing to be illiberal, or have the world outstrip me,—and, so far, I find that it will do very well,—that it will do admirably."
"Well, we won't speak of new brooms."
"Yet there's a great deal of disturbance everywhere about, I hear. You don't know, perhaps," said Mr. Houghton, in an under-voice, and nervously drawing up his chair, "that Marlboro' has had his place under guard these three weeks?"
"Crowded on all his steam, and now he's sitting on the valve. What a blessed life it is!" said Mr. Dean.
"Come, come, Dean, we shall have to look up your record!"
"Dear me!" said Miss Murray, "why will you talk about it? It's worse than ghost-stories just before bed. I've heard you gentlemen insinuating so much together that I fancy every night I hear the great alarm-bell booming in my dreams."
"There's no danger of that here."
"But it would be so terrible anywhere!"
"Here is Will," said her mother, as the young brother of Laura entered. "If, my dear friends, we should change the subject for bed-candles"—