"But why lose me my heritage?"
"Do you think the Austrian government would suffer your estates to pass to this English jackanapes, a clerk in a public office? O, sage in theory, why are you such a simpleton in action?"
Nothing moved by this taunt, Riccabocca rubbed his hands, and then stretched them comfortably over the fire.
"My friend," said he, "the heritage would pass to my son—a dowry only goes to the daughter."
"But you have no son."
"Hush! I am going to have one; my Jemima informed me of it yesterday morning; and it was upon that information that I resolved to speak to Leslie. Am I a simpleton now?"
"Going to have a son," repeated Harley, looking very bewildered; "how do you know it is to be a son?"
"Physiologists are agreed," said the sage positively, "that where the husband is much older than the wife, and there has been a long interval without children before she condescends to increase the population of the world—she (that is, it is at least as nine to four)—she brings into the world a male. I consider that point, therefore, as settled, according to the calculations of statistics and the researches of naturalists."
Harley could not help laughing, though he was still angry and disturbed.
"The same man as ever; always the fool of philosophy."