"Oh! And you" (for Lord Jocelyn now recollected him)—"are Mr. Bunker, are you? Do you remember me? Think, man."
Mr. Bunker thought his hardest; but if you do not remember a man, you might as well stand on your head as begin to think.
"Twenty years ago," said Lord Jocelyn, "I took away your nephew, who has now come back here."
"You did, you did," cried Bunker eagerly. "Ah, sir, why did you let him come back here? A bad business—a bad business."
"I came to see him to-day, perhaps to ask him why he stays here."
"Take him away again, sir—don't let him stay. Rocks ahead, sir!" Mr. Bunker put up hands in warning. "When I see youth going to capsize on virtue it makes my blood, as a Christian man, to curdle—take him away."
"Certainly it does you great credit, Mr. Bunker, as a Christian man; because curdled blood must be unpleasant. But what rocks?"
"A rock—one rock, a woman. In that 'ouse, sir, she lives; her name is Miss Kennedy—that is what she calls herself. She's a dressmaker by trade, she says; and a captivator of foolish young men by nature—don't go anigh her. She may captivate you. Daniel Fagg made her an offer of marriage, and he's sixty. He confessed it to me. She tried it on with me; but a man of principles is proof. The conjurer wanted to marry her. My nephew, Dick Coppin, is a fool about her."
"She must be a very remarkable woman," said Lord Jocelyn.